The Golden Lady and the Ferret Prince
by ianthewaiting
Summary: Doctors Longbottom and Granger have been contracted to investigate the strange spell that has Draco Malfoy in a perpetual state of dreaming. Delving into dreams is a dangerous matter, one matter only Hermione Granger can handle. DH-EWE, AU, non-canon elements, Dark!fic, HG/DM, HG/NL, non-con, PLEASE read warnings in Chapter 1!
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** The Golden Lady and the Ferret Prince  
 **Author:** ianthe_waiting  
 **Rating:** MA/NC-17  
 **Disclaimer:** The Harry Potter books and their characters are the property of JK Rowling. This is a work of fan-fiction. No infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story. I am just borrowing the puppets, but this is my stage.  
 **Genre:** Mystery, Drama, Adventure  
 **Warnings:** DH-EWE, AU, Extreme violence, non-con, torture, M/F  
 **Summary:** Doctors Longbottom and Granger have been contracted to investigate the strange spell that has Draco Malfoy in a perpetual state of dreaming. Delving into dreams is a dangerous matter, one only Hermione Granger can do.

 **Author's Notes: I hate leaving things undone.**

In somnis veritas

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. –Douglas Adams

* * *

 **I.**

With the force of impact, he felt his teeth sink into the fleshy part of the inside of his lower lip. Blood gushed into his mouth and when the shock wave of impact subsided, he spat out this mouthful of blood, his brain still rattling in his skull.

There was a soft cry to his left and then the scent of petrol and motor oil…it overwhelmed his senses momentarily. His vision returned with sharp clarity and he realized he was alive. With this realization, he began to move, taking in the sight of carnage all around him and the dirty snow outside the automobile. The automobile had rolled at least four times and the roof over his head was knocking into his skull. The windows were broken out and the cold came seeping in like probing fingers to snatch away the heat of the once intact passenger cabin. He shivered as he found the latch of the seat belt and let the strap slide over his jumper-clad chest.

Adrenaline made him forego seeing if he were injured, the smell of petrol was permeating his nose, his eyes—danger, danger…

Another soft cry had him kicking open the back passenger side door, the crushed metal whinging, and he stumbled out of the vehicle, spitting more blood. His teeth had bit through his lower lip, and the pain was negligible compared to the cold that whipped around him. The front of the car was in ragged shards of plastic and metal, oil dripping to the ice and snow covered roadway, barely grated to allow automobiles to pass on the mountainside. The driver, and their guide was dead, crushed in between the steering column, dash board, and other parts of the automobile he did not know what to call. The front of the automobile was partially lodged into a high snow bank, teetering on the edge of the road ready to roll down the mountainside.

"Merlin, Hermione!" he shouted, realizing that his companion had been the one whimpering in the back seat next to him.

He moved, slipping back into the crushed vehicle and found her looking at him with wide eyes, her face bloodied from the broken glass, her legs pinned under the seat and part of the metal frame before her. The expression on her face made him fearful, and slowly, he unlatched the seat belt, careful that the buckle did not hit her face or rasp against her bleeding chest.

Finding his wand in the holster under the right sleeve of his jumper, hidden from the Muggle guide, he Vanished what he could of what was pinning her legs. She cried out at the loss of weight, but did not move. Finally, he could pull her from the car, her arms wrapped about his neck. His boots slipped on the snowy mountain road, as he carried her away from the car. It was as he set her down on a snow covered low boulder that the automobile tumbled down the steep escarpment, the petrol catching fire.

He shuddered at the sound, and knew that their luggage was destroyed, the samples they had taken, and a good deal of their work. However, he saw to his companion, who was just able to keep herself upright and forgot about it all. The blood on her face came from a gash at her temple. There were many contusions on her face, her neck, and hands, and as he moved to touch her jacket, she winced. There was another gash on her left side, the blood staining her blouse and running down to her long woolen skirt.

"My legs…" she whinged in a hiss, and he knelt down to look at the growing bloody patch of skirt on her left leg.

When he lifted the soiled hem to look at her lower leg, he gagged.

"I'm cold…" she whispered weakly.

He caught her before she fell off the boulder.

The closest hospital was in Lhasa, surely, but he did not know where. The return point, the place he could Apparate, was their rented room in Lhasa, but he knew that she needed a doctor who could somehow save her legs, stop the internal bleeding, and quickly.

Hoisting her small body into his arms with his wand tight in his right hand under her shoulders, he closed his eyes. The cold and shock was distracting, and like a fool, he screamed a roar. The exhalation of air in his lungs caused his bloodied lip to drip on to her head, but it cleared his mind.

With a lingering whimper, Neville Longbottom Apparated, his mind set on only one thing—saving his friend and the woman he adored more than any other.

* * *

In her own dreams, she often was a spectator. Her adventures were from a third person point of view, and from the distance, she knew she was indeed dreaming. There was safety in being a spectator, though there were moments during REM sleep where she felt what her body was supposed to be feeling. She felt arousal, sometimes sickness, and the freedom of flight dreams—as most people do when they can defy the law of physics.

Hermione Granger, generally, liked to dream, for in her dreams she was whole, young, and powerful. She was the master of her dreams, and only the rare nightmare shook that control from her grasp.

Logic oftentimes kept the nightmares at bay, but in those nightmares, she often dreamt of herself as she was in waking. There were no Dark Lords, no Wars, and no painful loss of loved ones. In Hermione Granger's nightmares, she was dying on a mountain pass in Tibet.

Hermione stumbled slightly and knocked into Neville Longbottom's overflowing desk in their small offices attached to St. Mungo's in London. Several rolls of parchment fell and as she bent down to retrieve them, a sun browned hand moved before her.

"I'll get that."

Hermione smiled as Neville took up the scrolls, but left on the rug was one last envelope with a flourished hand addressed to 'Drs. Longbottom & Granger, Spell Damage Specialists, c/o St. Mungo's, London.' Hermione took the thick vellum envelope in her hand as Neville rearranged his desk slightly.

Turning the envelope over, her light brown eyes moved over the address and she frowned.

"What's this, Neville?" she asked innocently, containing her disappointment in her partner and friend.

Neville Longbottom, aged twenty-eight, blinked his hazel eyes and reached out a hand for the letter. Hermione Granger, aged twenty-nine, did not give it to him, but showed him the address on the back of the envelope.

Dropping his hand into his lap as he sat behind his desk and sighed.

"I just…" he started, and groaned, ruffling his long dark brown hair, pulling several strands from the red ribbon at the nape of his neck. "I meant to show it to you, Hermione, honestly."

Hermione smirked sourly, continuing to her own desk, limping slightly and grunting softly as she sat down in her office chair, the letter in her hands. It had been opened, the silver wax seal broken.

Withdrawing the heavy vellum and tossing the envelope on her tidy desk, she unfolded the letter and scanned the contents. An eyebrow rose, and she read aloud as Neville sighed again and leaned back into his chair.

"'Doctors Longbottom and Granger, I was not sure by which channels to contact you, so I wrote directly. It is my understanding that as 'specialists' you can be engaged in a private capacity to heal those suffering from unique spell damage.

It is the wish of the Malfoy family that an interview be arranged to address the current state of our son, Draco. We have refrained from bringing him to St. Mungo's due to the discretion needed in his current situation. As it stands, we will be willing to fulfill, to the best of our ability, any requirements the Doctors may need, as well as pay whatever fees necessary.

Please reply by Floo or by Owl. Sincerely, Lady N. B. Malfoy, Wiltshire.'"

Neville bowed his head, abashed, as Hermione folded the letter and dropped it on her desk. He awaited her rebuke, but none came. Instead, he felt her eyes upon him.

"This was dated a month and half ago, Neville."

"Yes."

Hermione sighed her own frustration, rolled her eyes and leaned back into her chair, resting her elbows on the arms of the seat.

"We swore seven years ago that we would treat whomever we could, no matter their rank, status, and former affiliations."

"Yes."

"And the Malfoys are no exception."

Neville said nothing, his eyes moving to Hermione's sensible shoes and the stocking drawn over one thin ankle of flesh and the other of metal.

"I will write them immediately. I will think of some excuse, surely, as to why we did not reply earlier…"

Neville's eyes moved to Hermione's face, to the scar on her temple and the sloppy bun on the top of her head. Her expression was stern, and Neville knew that he would have to somehow make amends from keeping the letter from her attention. He had done it out of kindness, he had thought originally. Their workload had been too heavy when the letter came, and only three days before they finished their last case. They had just returned from Winnipeg, and all they had been doing since their return was consultations in the hospital.

The stay in Winnipeg had taken less time than they originally thought, but Neville was happy to be away from the snow. Snow brought too many bad memories.

Swiveling his chair back to his desk, he returned to his notebook, recording the last of the notes with the Winnipeg case for their records, trying to assess what to bill the Canadian Wizarding family they had helped.

The scratch of a quill against parchment behind him distracted his thoughts for a moment, and he let his own quill tip hover over the page. Through the years, he had always appreciated the way her quill would move over parchment, in rhythmic tones and scratches. Neville appreciated Hermione more than she would ever know.

The incident with concealing the letter had not been the first time he had, in his own way, protected her. Ever since the 'accident,' as they called it, he was more protective than ever. Hermione took chances far too often, especially in treating the unfortunate souls who had suffered from varying degrees of spell damage. Whether it was in trying to reverse a spell, finding new methods and means in treating the damage, or in the most extreme cases, risking herself to bring someone out of a coma or stupor, Hermione was adamant and tireless.

Neville supposed it had started when they began working together to heal his parents immediately after the War. Their work crossed disciplines—Potions, Herbology, Charms, and Arithmancy. The work that made them famous was a potion that treated the affects of the Cruciatius, a potion that gave Alice and Frank Longbottom weeks and eventually years of lucidity. Having his parents was the one thing Neville had wished for all of his life, and knowing that they would live a normal life again was a gift he could never return to Hermione in a fitting fashion.

The only picture he had on his desk was of himself, his parents, and Hermione at Christmas three years before. Hermione sat next to Alice, laughing about something Neville could not recall. It was one of his happiest images, the moment he clung to when he felt the least bit low.

"There now…" Hermione whispered as the scratching of the quill stopped and he heard her blow on the wet ink before folding the parchment. "Excuses have been made, my apologies sent, and now we wait for our next case."

Neville glanced over his shoulder to Hermione who was smiling to herself. He felt ill at ease.

The Malfoys, as far as anyone in Britain knew, kept to themselves after the War. There had been an announcement two years after the War that Draco Malfoy had married, but Neville could not remember to whom. The Malfoys were rarely seen in public, having managed to keep themselves out of Azkaban for their role in the War, and Neville supposed it was just as well.

For years, Neville had lost touch with much of that world. He was never interested in 'Society' or who had married whom, who had had children and who was working where. As far as Neville was concerned, it meant nothing to his and Hermione's work. More often than not, they were abroad. The offices attached to St. Mungo's was simply where they came when they were back in Britain, and at those times, Neville went back to his parents and grandmother in Shropshire while Hermione went to stay in a rented flat in a building Ron Weasley owned in Exeter.

Of course, they did keep in touch with some people—the Weasleys, the Potters, the Thomases, and the Finnegans. Still yet, Hermione was close to Ron who was quite wealthy, though it was more of an acquaintance in later years. Harry Potter was still a close friend to them both, and often they would meet when Neville and Hermione were in Britain. It was usually through Ginny Potter that Neville heard gossip.

Glancing at the wall clock, Neville frowned to see that it was after six when their day should have ended an hour before. He abandoned his notebook and stretched, wincing at the old pain in his back. Turning the chair to face Hermione, he found her standing, a letter in her hand.

"I'll post this, and we'll be off?"

He nodded. They always left the offices together, and Neville was very aware of the gossip surrounding them both.

* * *

The psychic apparatus of her mind was well balanced, Hermione Granger believed. If anything, id was under a tight reign. In her dream travels her id only manifested in her sexual dreams with faceless male partners. Occasionally a mask of a face would appear on her partner, and Hermione's logical mind, knowing that she was dreaming, would laugh.

Sometimes it was Ron, other times Harry, and occasionally Neville. All were handsome men, and all were her close friends. However, a new face would appear through the haze of dreaming and sex, and the face was one that was based more on speculation than fact.

Hermione had not seen Draco Malfoy since the Battle of Hogwarts. The mask was not that of a teenage boy, but a man, who looked like a cross between Lucius Malfoy and Sirius Black with blond hair. It was not a face she found distasteful; in fact, it made her body respond, in her dream and reality, positively.

Waking brought back all the aches and pains in her body, washing away the lingering mental weight of a male body leaning over her and the fullness she felt inside her body. Hermione was often frustrated.

Her id, subconsciously, called out for action.

* * *

In private, Hermione Granger let the pain in her body seep through to her exterior.

She lived alone in a nice flat in Exeter with all the amenities. Hermione had spent a great deal of money fixing the flat to her tastes, although she figured she only lived there two months out of a year. Lounging on the red silk divan before the fire after the workday had ended, she let her hair down and curled her body inward to remove her shoes. Then, hoisting up her long skirt, she flicked her thumb over a latch and pulled her prosthetic from her leg to let it fall with a 'thunk' on the rug. The skin of her thigh itched from the socket fitting so tightly.

It was not the prosthetic that pained her, it was the phantom pain she felt when it was especially cold. There was little she could do about it, she knew, and shifted on the divan to lay her head back and close her eyes.

An amputated leg was not much to pay to be able to live, she knew.

Hermione Granger had lived through a War, unscathed bodily, only to be involved in a terrible accident two years later. She did not remember much about the accident itself, but she remembered Neville saving her life. The doctors in Lhasa did what they could to maintain her life, but her left leg was ruined, crushed beyond the capability of the Tibetan doctors to repair. Moving her to see a Wizarding Healer in China would de-stabilize her, and Hermione let Neville make the decision: amputation or a higher chance of death.

Hermione could not fault her dear friend. He was injured terribly as well, though adrenaline did not make him realize it until later. He had bitten through his lip, fractured his skull, broken ribs, and torn muscles in his back and shoulders. Neville pushed his pain aside, too concerned about her. He stayed with her for the three months in the hospital in Lhasa, helped with her adjustment to the amputation above the knee, kept her mind busy with resuming their work. They had been investigating the unique magical applications of meditation methods used by the Tibetan monks secluded in the mountains. They had also been investigating claims of the use of a particular winter herb used by local mountain villagers to 'see the unseen.'

When she was finally able to return to Britain, it was on crutches, and with a new idea.

Neville helped her develop the idea to be implemented in the use of patients who were literally trapped in their own minds due to spell damage or brain trauma that kept the patient in comas. It was a method of therapy inspired by their travels through China and Tibet, study of Taoist and Tantric writings, the Subtle Body, Dzogchen, and other mystical sources.

They called it 'hypnagogic insertion' or HI for short.

Hermione opened her eyes, bringing her own mind back to her Exeter flat, and pulled her wand from the pocket of her skirt, Summoning her crutches from near the door. A sound had forced her to open her eyes, and at the icy window, a fine eagle owl was waiting to be let in. Slipping her hands through the forearm braces, she grunted as she lifted herself from the divan. Hermione did not use her crutches outside of the privacy of home. No one at St. Mungo's would ever see her shamble and balance on one small foot.

Opening the window to let the owl inside, Hermione shivered at the icy draft that came in through the sash. The owl dropped a letter on the divan, easily finding the perch with a bowl of treats and water set near the other window in the drawing room. The metal crutches clacked as she moved slowly to the divan to sit and take up the letter.

Again, there was flowing script on the front with her Exeter address. Hermione had purposely given the address, still slightly put out with Neville for concealing the original missive.

 _'Dr. H. Granger, thank you for your reply. We realize how busy you must be. No apology is necessary. It would please us greatly if you and Dr. Longbottom could come to the Manor in Wiltshire at your earliest convenience. Tomorrow at noon would be ideal for us. If this is acceptable, please Floo us on the receipt of this letter. Lady N. Malfoy.'_

Hermione blinked.

"Eager, I suppose?" she mumbled to herself, glancing to the eagle owl who ate noisily on a crunchy owl treat.

Hermione moved to the rug, using her crutch to push away the metal monstrosity that Wizarding prosthetists considered 'top of the line.' Wandlessly Summoning the pot of Floo Powder down from the mantle, Hermione took a cleansing breath, staring into the fire.

Was she ready for another case, one that would keep her in a Britain gripped in one of the coldest winters on record?

Yes, she thought, she was…anything to keep her mind busy from contemplating her life and its obvious personal deficiencies.

* * *

Hermione dreamt about her childhood home quite often. She supposed it was because it was the place where she had felt the safest. It was also the place where she realized she was not like many other people, that she was a witch.

In her dream home, memories of the mundane comprised each room. The way that later afternoon sunlight would stream through the sheer curtains in the front room, or the way the garden door was often open to the lush greenery beyond, it all made Hermione feel safe. Even when her parents appeared in her dreams, it was to embrace her warmly. The dreams shifted often, and sometimes Hermione would find doors that did not belong, leading to places made entirely of her sleeping mind.

She was dreaming of her childhood home the night before going to Wiltshire, and upon the slightly conscious thought of Wiltshire, the dream changed.

Like a spirit, Hermione moved through a darkened parlor in the front parts of Malfoy Manor, and from a distance, she saw her younger self being Crucio'd by Bellatrix Lestrange. From her vantage point, Hermione could see the disgust and horror on Narcissa Malfoy's face. She could also see Draco Malfoy's face, stretched tight with shock. His hands shook from fear, and hesitation.

Echoing through the dream was Neville's voice, calling her name.

The dream changed again, and this time, Hermione was torturing Bellatrix Lestrange, and the Malfoys were clapping their hands in approval.


	2. Chapter 2

**II.**

Neville held the handle of his black leather medical bag firmly in his hand as he stood next to Hermione in the foyer of Malfoy Manor. He focused his dismay and nervousness into holding that bag and tried not to show it on his face. Trying to focus on the immediate, Neville found that even dressed in heavy winter cloaks, it felt as cold inside the Manor as it was outside. An elf offered to take their cloaks and Hermione replied, kindly, that she would be more comfortable with her dark red fur lined cloak on. Neville knew how badly the cold made her feel, and smirked when the elf seemed slightly offended.

Neville let his hand over the small of Hermione's back, a familiar gesture that he hoped she did not mind. He did it often when they were in strange places, a sort of protective gesture that carried over from Tibet.

The foyer of Malfoy Manor was dark except for a few candles in a candelabrum near the terminus of a sweeping staircase. The dark travertine floors and wainscoting were dusty, the dim light of the foyer unable to hide the hold of decay. From the dust under his feet, and several other footprints to and from the Floos, it seemed Malfoy Manor had not enjoyed many guests for some time.

Neville barely recognized Narcissa Malfoy when she descended the stairs, seeming to glide effortlessly, her stiff black taffeta dress whispering as she moved. She paused to bow politely at the bottom of the staircase before coming closer.

"Doctor Longbottom, Doctor Granger, welcome to Wiltshire," Narcissa Malfoy said in almost a whisper.

She had aged since that last time Neville saw her, deeper lines adorning her face around her mouth and brilliant amethyst eyes. There was even silver in her blonde hair, pulled up in pins from her face.

"If you would follow me, I'll show you to a much warmer parlor."

Narcissa Malfoy led them to a room off the foyer, and as Neville's hand lingered over the small of Hermione's back, he felt her sigh in what appeared to be relief. Compared to the foyer, the parlor was brighter, warmer, and far cleaner. It was papered in soft green velvet with dark mahogany fixtures and two large windows over looking the magicked green lawn and white peacocks. A fire roared in a large fireplace of green marble and over the mantle was an ancient bronze mirror.

Sitting in a leather armchair next to the fire was Lucius Malfoy, who rose as they entered the room and bowed curtly. He too looked older to Neville, not as substantial as he remembered, but dressed in a fine costume of a black velvet coat, green cravat and smartly cut trousers and boots.

"Doctor Neville Longbottom and Doctor Hermione Granger, dear," Narcissa announced as way of formal introduction.

Lucius' pale eyes moved from Neville to Hermione, and then he nodded and sat down again without a word. Mrs. Malfoy showed Hermione to the couch facing the fire and Neville to the adjacent armchair. Narcissa Malfoy did not sit, however, but stood behind the couch, hovering nervously.

Neville set his bag next to his chair and regarded Lucius for a moment before glancing to Hermione.

"We are not exactly sure how to begin, Doctor Longbottom, so forgive us if we plow into the matter directly," Lucius said finally, his voice much deeper than Neville recalled. "Our son, Draco, has been unresponsive to the treatment of the family's Healer for four months, and only in the last two months did we decide to contact you.

It seems you were otherwise engaged…"

"For that we apologize, Mr. Malfoy," Hermione said, her eyes glimmering almost gold in the firelight where they were otherwise a light brown. "And I apologize again for interrupting, but before you continue, I must tell you that we will do whatever we can for the younger Mr. Malfoy."

Lucius turned his head slowly at the sound of Hermione's voice, and Neville sighed internally, as it appeared Lucius Malfoy had intended on ignoring her all together.

"There are certain questions we will have to ask you both, and for the sake of giving Mr. Draco Malfoy the best of our efforts, please answer truthfully," Hermione continued, not about to give Lucius Malfoy time to pontificate and possibly insult either of them.

Narcissa Malfoy seemed torn between standing attentively, and sitting next to Hermione. When she finally made up her mind, it was to sit very close to Hermione's left side.

"We will do whatever we can, Doctor Granger," Narcissa said, again, in almost a whisper.

The longer Neville studied the woman, the sooner he came to realize that the woman was prematurely aged. There was a lingering illness about her; a slow wasting that had begun recently. He wondered if the woman knew.

"Can you tell us what you know about the cause of son's condition?"

Lucius shifted, his eyes narrowing on Hermione's face. "My son…" he began archly, but Narcissa Malfoy continued, glaring out of the corner of her eye at her husband.

Neville found the glance interesting.

"Draco has been working with experimental Charms. It started after the War and with his departure from Britain. He studied with an American wizard who specialized in new spells used by the MACUSA's Auror division. Draco created a new type of Stunning Hex—more humane and less damaging to the person's mind. He came back to Britain a few years later, and continued his work here at the Manor. He was offered a position in the Ministry, but he turned it down."

Neville was surprised, as was Hermione, whose gentle smirk told him how pleased she was indeed.

"And this experimentation led to his current state?" Hermione asked.

"We have every indication in believing so," Lucius interjected. "We found him in his workshop."

Neville cocked his head and regarded Lucius. "Workshop?"

"Yes, it is part of Draco's rooms, set a story below. I can show you whenever you like," Narcissa whispered, her eyes fixed on her lap.

Hermione nodded. "Any idea as to what spell he was working with?"

"None. Draco was very secretive, and only when he met with success did he ever speak of his work. He did keep a journal, but we have not had any luck deciphering it," Narcissa sighed.

Neville inhaled deeply, meeting Hermione's eyes again.

"And the Healer? What were his observations?" Neville asked, adding his voice again to the conversation.

"Besides handing over the records, we know only so much, Doctor Longbottom. Draco seems, by all diagnostics, to be in perfect health. The Healer has ordered potions to maintain his health, vitamins, and food supplements. When we found Draco, he was physically unscathed, and we initially thought he was unconscious. He did not wake, no matter what we did…"

There was airiness in Narcissa Malfoy's voice that concealed tears.

"What is it that you need, Doctors?" Lucius asked, leaning forward in his chair, his palms pressed together.

Again, a meeting of eyes.

"I will have to examine your son first, there are some diagnostic spells that most Healers do not use, but are necessary for us to categorize the nature of the damage. Doctor Granger will need access to Mr. Malfoy's workshop and his rooms. After we do some precursory investigation, we will be able to know how to proceed from that point…"

"Will you need rooms here?"

Neville blinked at Narcissa's words. "It is too early to say, Mrs. Malfoy. If we start our investigation today, we can possibly have a conclusion by morning…"

"Rooms then," Narcissa Malfoy uttered, more to herself than to either Neville or Hermione. "Lucius, show Doctor Longbottom to Draco, I'll take Doctor Granger to Draco's workshop…"

Neville had come to one conclusion as he followed Lucius Malfoy up into the Manor proper. There was some sort of running argument between husband and wife, and he wondered if it would have any bearing on their investigation. However, Neville cleared his mind of suspicions as Lucius Malfoy showed him into a large white room with sunlit windows. Draco Malfoy lay on an oversized four-poster bed, and Neville stifled a smirk, thinking how much like 'Sleeping Beauty' his old schoolmate seemed.

Draco Malfoy, Neville had to concede, was far more handsome than he. The sharpness of his features Neville remembered in his mental caricature of the man was replaced with healthy fullness. Malfoy's hair was as long as his father's, though the shade of blond was more white or ash than Lucius' silver.

As Neville approached the bed, his medical bag still in his hand, he could see by the length of the body laying under white sheets that Malfoy was over six feet tall, and that he was no longer gawky or a teenager. Quickly figuring in his head, he assumed Draco Malfoy was also twenty-eight years old. Lucius Malfoy lingered at the door, seemingly distracted and gazing toward the windows. Neville paid the patriarch little mind as he set the medical bag on the left side of the bed and opened it.

Extracting a notebook and a Dicto-quill, he activated the Charm as he produced his wand from his sleeve and began performing basic diagnostic spells. Heart rate, blood pressure, everything he said aloud for the quill. As the Malfoys had said, everything was a healthy norm. Neville sighed, moving on to the more complicated diagnostics, all the while wondering why there was no mention of Malfoy's wife.

* * *

Dreams had been important to Hermione for years, beginning with Harry's connection with Voldemort before the onslaught of true War. The connection between the wizards, of course, had been the fact that Harry's scar had been a Horcrux. But still, Hermione wondered if it were possible to connect two minds without the use of Dark Magic.

She studied Legilimency, astral walking, dream weaving, and other obscure magicks used around the world. It all came to one thing, manipulation. Hermione was not interested in manipulating minds, but observing and traveling inside the mind. Hypnagogic Insertion let her move through the subconscious mind like a tourist, and as a tourist, she could meet the hidden selves. One's perceptions had much to do with dreams.

In her dreams, Neville was much more than her companion and colleague; he was very much the hero. And very much more...

* * *

Hermione found Narcissa Malfoy to be very polite, not asking questions as to why Hermione had ascended the grand staircase so slowly. Even when Narcissa Malfoy glanced to the boot on her left foot, there was no judgment in her eyes. The only question asked was to whether Hermione were too cold in the Manor.

Draco Malfoy's rooms were at the far end of the western wing, and by the look of the corridors, it seemed to Hermione that no one else lived in the wing. She was shown first into Malfoy's private parlor, and Narcissa moved ahead of her to light a fire in the grate, quickly warming the small room.

"If there is anything you need, please call for Nyx, she is Draco's personal elf. The bedroom is beyond the parlor, and the stairs down to the workshop can be found behind the green dragon tapestry.

If you will excuse me, I will see to your rooms."

And within a few seconds, Hermione found herself quite alone. With a wince, she shifted her hips, the socket of the prosthetic squeezing her left thigh too tightly. Pressing her lips together, she took a step into the room, finding it to be more of a small library than a parlor, a room appearing to have been lived in.

Below the casement windows was a cluttered desk, and Hermione began there. There were file folders, books, balled up pieces of parchment and quills. Picking up one file folder, Hermione flipped it open. Inside were divorce papers, dated three years previous. Hermione blinked as she read the top parchment. Draco Scorpius Malfoy v. Astoria Nemonia Greengrass. It was records of a settlement of the divorce, but Hermione would not let herself delve too deeply into the legalese. From what she could gather, it was a divorce on the basis of adultery on the side of the wife.

With a frown, Hermione closed the file and moved to pick up one of the balls of parchment. Smoothing it out, she found it was a hastily penned letter to a solicitor, and the handwriting, for the most part, was illegible. In fact, whatever she found in Draco Malfoy's hand was more like code than written English. Hermione could only pick out a few words here and there.

The books on the desk were mostly of one subject, Charms.

The other books on the shelves about the room were on various subjects, all the spines broken, the leather covers worn. Hermione limped toward the bookshelf closest to the only other door in the parlor, leading to the bedroom. There were knickknacks on the shelf, but as she came nearer, she found it was more a collection of curiosities. At eye level was a tiny snow globe with a skull of some rodent-like creature inside. There were clippings in small frames of printed pictures of astronomical bodies, galaxies and supernovas. There were foreign coins, most of which Hermione knew. A damaged snitch rested on a pedestal, a hippogriff claw next to the snitch, and a tarnished Inquisitorial Squad badge next to the claw. Hermione found it odd, wondering what sentiments it brought when Draco Malfoy to look at the items.

Hermione found that the bedroom was only slightly bigger than the parlor. She had expected a grand room with a large bed, but found that there was a small twin bed set against the far wall under the only window in the dark wood paneled room. A floor-to-ceiling tapestry of a green dragon eating harmless animals in the woven landscape hanged next to the door to a minuscule lavatory. The only remarkable piece of furniture in the room was the ancient armoire set against the wall next to where she stood in the doorway. Hermione limped to face the armoire, impressed by the intricate carving of a medieval castle set above a forest with tall, pillar like trees. Grasping the bronze handles, Hermione opened the doors to find it full of plain black clothing, and nothing much of interest. In the mirror on the back of the door, she looked at the tapestry against the wall, and then to her own face.

Her hair was combed neatly into a bun at the back of her head, and loose curls fell into her face, obscuring the scar on her temple. With her dark red cloak, she had hidden the prosthetic well with the full black skirt and high boot. She licked her lips and closed the doors.

Pulling aside the tapestry, Hermione found a handle to the door, and stepping back to draw her wand from the sash of her skirt, she lit it. The spiraling stairs down were dark and steep, and Hermione sighed, as she had to nearly sit on the steps to gently descend. Ascending again would be a problem.

The workshop the Malfoys had mentioned was larger than the rooms above combined. High grated windows lit the room while the hanging lamps from exposed beams overhead were unlit. Standing on the stone floor, Hermione narrowed her eyes to begin cataloguing what was before her.

There were several easels set in a wide circle in the middle of the room, and stepping into the middle of the circle, Hermione found she was faced with large oil paintings. Some were completed, and some were not. Some paintings moved, while others did not. The subject matter ranged from abstract to realistic, and the painting that interested Hermione the most was of a masked figure sitting on a throne in a dark chamber surrounded by candles, alone. The male figure was bare from the waist up, and in his hands were two wicked daggers crossed before him, reminiscent of statuary of Egyptian pharaohs. The only thing that moved was the flame of the candles and not the obviously male figure. The mask was some representation of a rodent type animal, and as Hermione narrowed her eyes further, she realized it was a ferret.

"Ferret…ferret…" she mumbled, remembering all too well what Barty Crouch Jr. had done to Malfoy in their Fourth Year.

The painting was unsettling, though Hermione could not pin down the exact reason. It was expertly executed, and Hermione noted that Draco Malfoy had immense artistic talent. It may be an important detail, she thought.

Beyond the circle of easels, further into the long hall of the workshop, Hermione saw a makeshift laboratory of sorts. Passing by a very detailed painting of a nude male with another mask obscured face and long blond hair, Hermione lumbered into what she believed to be Draco Malfoy's main workspace.

The first thing Hermione noticed was the charred and blackened patch in the middle of the stone floor. There was a strange scent, she found, as she lumbered to stand just at the perimeter—a sweet scent of scalded sugar. Was this where Malfoy was found?

"Nyx?"

Her voice was barely a whisper, and clearing her throat, she called again.

"Yes, Madam?" a voice sounded behind her, very deep, and very old.

Hermione was startled by the voice, and turned too quickly, her left boot dragging as she turned. Righting herself quickly, she regarded an elf, the smallest she had ever seen, which was gazing passively up at her face with hooded, bulbous russet colored eyes. Even the skin was a reddish color though the thick silver hair on its head acted almost as clothing, obscuring what appeared to be an old, yellowed pillow case.

Clearing her throat again, and letting her insides wriggle uncomfortably from the elf's gaze, Hermione asked: "Is this where your master was found?"

Her hand motioned to the blackened spot behind her and slowly the elf nodded.

"Yes, Madam, Nyx finds her Master there, like sleeping."

"And do you know what sort of work he was doing just before you found him?"

The elf's eyes slid closed and the tiny body shrugged a mournful sigh. "No, Madam. Nyx was not allowed to enter when Master was working magicks… Master was afraid Nyx would be hurt, or killed."

Hermione licked her lips, her eyes moving to the rest of the room and the three worktables against the walls.

"How long was it, you think, between the time he fell unconscious and you finding him, Nyx?"

The strange eyes opened again and a weak, wobbling chin lifted to regard Hermione coolly again. "Not long, Nyx thinks. There was a noise, Madam, and Nyx came quickly. Nyx called for the Mother Malfoy and Father to come."

Nodding, Hermione moved to her right, to the first worktable, her eyes scanning the filthy surface. Most of what she saw on the table was related to Potions work, and at the far end, there was a crusty cauldron. She mentally catalogued ingredients, moving with a hand on the edge of the table until she peeked into the cauldron.

Felix Felicis.

"Was he successful in brewing the potion?" she asked more to herself than to the elf that seemed to hop nearer as if to keep an eye on Hermione lest she disturb something.

"Aye, Master was very good with Potions," the elf answered, again, startling Hermione.

"And he had been using it?"

Nyx's mien turned mournful again. "Yes… Master needed luck with his spell craft, Madam…"

Hermione felt her expression darken. Consuming large quantities could be lethal, and overuse broke down the essential mental qualities that comprised caution, logic, and moderation. Overuse was very much like an alcoholic's lack of inhibition.

The next table, against the far wall, was loaded down with stacks of books, many open to particular pages, and of varying subjects. Hermione's fingers moved over colored illustrations of the human brain, illustrations of Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland,' an illustration from Sade's 'Justine,' and illustrations from Garrigue's English version of 'Iconographic encyclopedia of sciences, literature, and art.' Hermione mentally catalogued names—Baum, Brothers Grimm, Moorcock, Wolfe, Casanova, etc. The only connection Hermione could see was the element of fantasy.

"Those are Master's favorite books, Madame," Nyx commented as Hermione came upon the last book at the end of the table, Ripa's 'Iconographie,' an original edition, she assumed.

Beside the end of the table was an ornate mahogany lectern with a large tome open on the angled top. The journal, the Malfoys had mentioned, Hermione saw as she scanned the open page. All she could read was the date at the top, penned sloppily. August…

'Close to breakthrough…essence of self…id…controlling factor…soon able to use for…application…'

Those were the only words Hermione could read clearly and as she flipped back to previous pages, the illegibility was consistent. Tucked between the pages were clipped pictures, again of distant galaxy clusters, and other oddities. There were pictures of lobotomy procedures, banned in the modern age, and erotic postcards from the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Century, all illustrations.

Perhaps if she had months to devote to deciphering Malfoy's handwriting, Hermione would know something more about the spells he was trying to create. As it was, she could not spend months trying to read one book…

The last table was loaded down with small cages and tanks, all empty.

"Was your master experimenting with animals?" Hermione asked, glancing down to the elf that had moved quite close to her left leg, quietly weeping.

"Y-Yes, Madam. Rats, snakes, frogs, but Master never killed them… Nyx was asked to release them when Master fell ill."

Hermione sucked her lower lip between her teeth, glancing back to the thick journal and to the books on the table. The images danced behind her eyes, but still she was not seeing an immediate conclusion as to what Draco Malfoy had done to himself, inadvertently or not.

* * *

Her subconscious mind was always filled with images of places. Besides Hermione's veracious reading from age three and into her adulthood, she enjoyed gazing at images in books as much as she enjoyed reading the text. It was these sorts of images that fueled her imaginary, interior life, a life, sadly, that she dwelt in more often than not.

In her dreams, she had walked along white sand beaches of the South Pacific, flown over the Alps in a Montgolfier balloon, floated upon the dense waters of the Dead Sea, and explored the depths of Krubera-Voronya cave in Abkhazia—the deepest known cave on earth. Hermione's mind was filled with colors, sounds, feelings, and tastes.

The images Draco Malfoy kept in his books were just as spectacular, and Hermione found the images familiar. She wondered why he looked at them, what did they inspire in his mind? There were more Muggle books than Wizarding…

Hermione came to the quick conclusion that she did not know Draco Malfoy at all.


	3. Chapter 3

**III.**

A central parlor joined the prepared rooms, and that was where Hermione slipped her thigh out of the socket of her prosthetic, and laid down on a couch below a great window overlooking the gardens in the back of the Manor. Neville had tossed his robes and jacket over the arm of the couch and slid down into a bearskin rug, leaning back, his long hair brushing against Hermione's skirt where her shin should have been.

It was late, and after having a quiet dinner in the Malfoy dinning room, alone, they finally came together to look over their notes and discuss the prognosis.

Medically, Malfoy was a picture of health. The Malfoy family Healer had taken great care to administer Potions that would keep Malfoy well, vitamins to boost his immune system, and other supplements to keep normal bodily function in check. However, as Hermione scanned the diagnostic readings of Malfoy's brain function, she frowned, holding the parchment above her.

"There is no sign of physical trauma, and all brain functions seem normal…" she murmured as Neville paused from reading through her notes on his lap to glance to her. "No lesions, no contusions, no bleeding… Physically, the brain is normal."

"I checked for infections, inflammations, nothing," Neville added.

Hermione finished scanning the parchment before letting it flutter down to her chest, her arms falling to her sides, a finger rubbing her left thigh brushing against a dark brown lock of Neville's hair.

"The reticular formation has no trauma, and his blood work showed elevated levels of adenosine. The only odd thing is his brain waves. He is not brain dead, but he's not responding to any outside stimuli. Typical comatose state except one thing…"

Neville smirked. "He's trapped…trapped in his own head."

Hermione closed her eyes and rubbed her eyelids. "No physical signs of spell damage, yet he was found comatose after performing a spell, an experimental spell at that."

"It could be a spell that specifically targets brain function?"

"Maybe, or particular brain functions. The scans show that there is higher brain activity, dream activity…"

Hermione sat up, scooting on the couch to lean back into the arm, gazing down at Neville's long hair. Turning his head, his hazel eyes met hers, and for a silent moment, they stared at each other, a silent conversation starting.

"No, Hermione."

She smirked. "Can you think of any other option?"

Neville frowned, twisting slightly on the bearskin rug to regard her fully. "You have only experimented successfully on me, and we know each other well. We both were consenting, and we trusted one another… The last time you did not have to delve far to bring the patient out. To use that method is like…like blind Apparation, you will never know what to expect."

It was a sound argument, Hermione knew, but still, they had been asked to help.

"Then what is your conclusion, Neville? How can we heal Malfoy without using 'it?'"

Neville blinked and turned his eyes to Hermione's prosthetic on the floor nearby. "Potions and spells have had no effect in the past, by his records. Any sort of invasive surgery would be useless. We are not 'psychic surgeons' and we will not be able to see the damage and 'pluck' it out…" he sighed. "But HI is not a surefire method of healing whatever unseen damage there is, Hermione."

She licked her lips, eyes moving to the thick tome on an armchair by the fire across the parlor, Malfoy's journal. "It would take too long to decipher that book, Neville, if it is at all possible or useful."

Neville moved the notes to the rug and rose, and crossed the room. Picking up the journal, he fell into the chair, opening the cover. "I'll see what I can figure out, Hermione. It is better than charging ahead with a procedure that has far more risk than possible benefit."

Hermione lay back on the couch again, still seeing the images in Malfoy's book behind her eyes. "Have at it then, Nev…" she sighed wearily, reverting to using her shortened name for him. "We will need to speak with the Malfoys in the morning. We either do something or we don't…"

Neville said nothing, watching Hermione settled onto the couch and close her eyes.

The next few hours had Neville's eyes watering from trying to read Malfoy's handwriting, and dawn was soon approaching.

* * *

Hermione dreamt of water, lying in a shallow pool. The water covered her ears, and she was content to look up at mist floating above her and beyond that a sky filled with billions of stars. The water was tepid, like bath water.

Above her, a face materialized, leaning over her, and somehow she knew it was Malfoy.

 _"…help nothing…Granger…me or you…no solution…"_

The words were muddled through the water somehow mirroring his written words in his journal, and his face, his teenaged face, was sneering at her. He was mocking her.

 _"…don't want…Mudblood…worthless…"_

She wanted to return the sneer, and tell him she was not worthless. She could not move.

 _"…ugly and crippled…think you could do…Mudblood…"_

His pale face twisted terribly, his silver eyes gleaming malevolently. Hermione felt the water lap against the sides of her body, and begin to rise.

 _"…should have…killed…filthy Mudblood…"_

The water moved over her cheeks, slipping over her open eyes and seeping into her mouth and nostrils.

 _"…cannot save…useless…away…"_

Hermione was sinking, Malfoy's face becoming indistinct above her, and somehow Hermione was glad.

* * *

"Cruciatus."

Hermione bit into her lower lip with a cup of tea poised before her mouth. Gently lowering the fine porcelain cup to the saucer, she regarded Neville from across the table.

"From what I could decipher, Malfoy was contracted to produce a spell similar to the Cruciatus for means of interrogation."

She frowned, folding her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking.

"How?"

Neville's hazel eyes were rimmed with red from lack of sleep, and Hermione could see his weariness clearly in his face. He had spent most of the night and part of the morning pouring over Malfoy's journal while she slept. Hermione felt guilty and resisted the urge to touch him, to cup his handsome face in her hands and press her forehead to his.

"I think it works like a type of mental Boggart. It is a spell that induces great fear, mental anguish, while leaving the person physically unharmed. I suppose it would by a form of intimidation, lasting as long as the caster desired…"

"But… But that would be illegal!" she hissed, her ire rising at the mere thought of such mental torture.

Neville shook his head, sighing. "Not exactly. It is not 'torture' by the definition of the word. Besides, the method in which the mind it bewitches is unknown. Malfoy did not write anything more than 'induce terror.'"

Hermione pursed her lips. "Who gave the contract?"

Neville blinked his eyes to the sunlit window and the gardens beyond. "I found it pressed between some pages…" he murmured, pulling a piece of yellowed parchment from his trouser pocket.

Her fingers trembled as she took the sheaf from between Neville's fingers, her brown eyes scanning the printed words and the signature at the bottom. It was a facsimile of a contract, the original filed somewhere in the Ministry, she figured. Narrowing her eyes, she folded it again and dropped it on the table next to the porcelain teapot, and almost wished she could set the parchment on fire with her gaze.

"We need to talk to the Malfoys," Neville grumbled. "I do not think we have heard the whole truth."

* * *

Hermione watched their faces as Neville explained what he had learned from Malfoy's journal, as well as filling in their medical findings, and Hermione's belief that Malfoy have imbibed large quantities of Felix Felicis.

Narcissa Malfoy kept a lace handkerchief pressed her mouth, her pale blue eyes watery. Lucius Malfoy's face was stony, his eyes distant.

They sat in the same sitting room as they had when they first arrived at the Manor, and Hermione could not repress a shiver for a draft that entered the room from under the door.

"You need to understand, Doctor Longbottom, after the War, we were forced to pay a large settlement to the Ministry. We were bankrupt. Only now are we beginning to recover, due greatly to Draco," Lucius Malfoy said darkly from his armchair by the fire.

Hermione sat next to Neville on the couch while Narcissa Malfoy stood behind her husband's chair. It seemed at any moment, the older woman was about to burst into a full-on cry.

"With his work in America, he gave us back a bit of our wealth; it was enough to allow him to marry into a respectable Pure-blood family. Of course, it did not last long.

For the past few years, Draco has been taking contracts from the Ministry with large commissions—all to keep us out of the poorhouse."

Hermione blinked slowly as Lucius Malfoy's face began to crumple from what seemed to be pain, but watched as he quickly arranged himself with a renewed air of indifference.

"We were never made aware of the nature of his last project, only that it was to be his 'crowning achievement.' It would have been enough to pay off the last of our debts, insure that the Manor would be left in the family and not seized by the Ministry…"

"Then…" Hermione began. "How were you to pay us? Not that it really matters at this point, but…"

"I was going to sell the Black Family Grimoire," Narcissa answered in a tiny whisper.

Neville stiffened next to Hermione.

"There will be no need of that, Mrs. Malfoy," Hermione said suddenly, lifting her chin slightly. "If you will allow Doctor Longbottom and I another day in the Manor, I am sure we might be able to find a way to help your son."

* * *

The Black Family Grimoire, it was stuff of legend in the Pureblood families of Britain. Hermione only knew of it from mentions of books she had read at Grimmauld Place during the War. The library at Grimmauld Place held everything from the Dark Arts to Eromancy, common Herbology to Necromancy. There were several books written by Black Family ancestors and each at mentioned, at some point, the 'Grimoire.'

From what Hermione could gather the Grimoire was a compendium of Black Family spell craft, ranging from defensive spells to specific wards. Orion Black, Sirius' father, had noted in a book on household security that many of the spells contained within were 'bastardized versions of Black Family secrets.'

The Grimoire was priceless, and how it came to be in Narcissa's hands, Hermione figured, was because she was the last Black who had anything to gain by associating herself with the family. Andromeda Tonks had been disowned, and Bellatrix was long dead.

Hermione knew that there were a few Unspeakables that would give their eyeteeth to read the Grimoire. It was rumored the book was bound in basilisk skin, a rumor Hermione found unlikely although a shed basilisk skin was reported to be as strong or stronger than dragon hide, and far more expensive.

To sell the Grimoire would ensure the Malfoys had wealth for generations, and Hermione knew that by selling the Grimoire to the wrong person could spell disaster. There were more dangerous witches and wizards in the world besides Tom Riddle or Gellert Grindelwald.

Hermione did not mind that Neville was put out with her. Between the two of them, they had enough money to retire before thirty. Hermione was becoming more and more intrigued with how Draco Malfoy came to be in such a state that the Malfoys would ask her and Neville for help. And Hermione, by her very nature, could not pass up a mystery.

* * *

"Have you lost your mind, Hermione?" Neville hissed once they were back in their borrowed parlor.

Hermione limped to the sofa and sat down heavily, her hands going to her left thigh automatically. Her leg was paining her, and she had refrained from rubbing in the presence of the Malfoys as long as she could.

"I have not, Neville. If anyone has lost his or her minds, it is Harry Potter!" she growled.

Neville placed his hands on his hips and glowered.

"Harry is the Head of the Aurory, and it was his name at the bottom of the facsimile, Nev! Does Harry even know what has happened to Malfoy?" Hermione muttered, rubbing her thigh harder through her skirt.

Neville said nothing and moved to sit next to Hermione, his hand moving to grasp hers before she wore a hole through the woolen skirt. Hermione sighed in exasperation and closed her eyes.

"You read the contract, Hermione…there is a clause of 'non-responsibility' if Malfoy were to be somehow injured in the process of creating the spell. Malfoy signed it, surely knowing of the clause," Neville said as gently as possible. He was used to Hermione's frustrated outbursts, especially when her leg pained her.

She sat back on the couch, her head falling back, eyes closed, and sunlight making her skin glow golden. Neville swallowed thickly as her fingers wove through his.

"They cannot afford us, Hermione…"

"We've done pro bono work before…"

"That was different…"

Her eyes opened and Neville could feel her gaze on his cheek.

"I want to do HI, Nev."

He pulled his hand away from hers. "No."

Neville's one-word answer was powerful and resolute.

Hermione shifted next to him, her arm slipping through his, her cheek resting against his shoulder.

"I would rather do this with you, Nev, than without you."

Neville pulled away and stood, exasperation boiling up in his chest. Turning to her, he peered down at her face along his nose.

"He hated you in school, Hermione. What makes you think he will simply allow you inside? I do not have to tell you the risks, to the both of you!" he snarled.

Her face flushed with color. "You did not want to help him in the first place, Neville! If HI will heal him, we are charged to use it! Besides, I set aside old prejudices a long time ago, why haven't you?"

She did not need to stand to make Neville feel her ire engulf him, looming over him. Hermione had always had a certain bit of magic in her voice, acting something like an Imperius Curse when it came to breaking down his will.

"It may not work. You may not be able to get inside…" he whispered, defeated.

Hermione took a cleansing breath. "We won't know unless we try, Nev."

* * *

After the 'accident,' after they returned from Tibet, Harry and Ron were immediately at her side. Hermione was happy to have such good friends, but when the day was done and Ron went back to doing whatever he did, and Harry back to his family, it was Neville who stayed.

Through the hours of rehabilitation and therapy, Neville held her hand and wiped her brow. Hermione fancied that Neville felt responsible somehow for the 'accident.' Of course, it was not so, it had been just an accident, after all. Between work and rest, physical therapy and the mental adjustment to her condition, Neville was there, always by her side. At first, Hermione felt somewhat dependent upon him, and quickly squashed any romantic notions she had about him…as much as she could.

Neville had grown to be quite handsome, slimming in his adulthood, letting his hair grow. He kept himself fit, and worked on his confidence. There was little of the clumsy, gormless boy many remembered from school by the time Neville turned twenty-two. Most people knew him as a war hero, standing up to Voldemort during the Battle of Hogwarts, wielding Gryffindor's sword with the grace of a practiced warrior.

Hermione wondered if Neville had had anyone in his life, a girlfriend, or a lover. After the 'accident,' however, she was certain there was no one. He would sometimes leave Hermione's side to visit family, and more often than not, Hermione was invited along to have tea with Augusta Longbottom. Holidays were the same, an invitation coming with the address of Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom collectively.

It was as if they were a couple.

Hermione had her flat in Exeter and Neville would retreat to Augusta's house in Shropshire. When they travelled, which they did ten months out of the year, it was always together, with rooms together, and sometimes shared accommodations. Most foreign clients assumed that Hermione opted to keep her maiden name, and more than a few times, she would finally have to inform the clients that Neville was not her husband.

Time and again, Hermione would look at Neville and wonder. What would it be like to be something more to Neville than a friend and colleague? Hermione had always thought that any woman who chose Neville Longbottom would be lucky indeed. Neville was protective, strong, caring, and tender. He was also intelligent, talented, skilled, and ingenious. What if she were the lucky one?

Neville would doubtless make her happy. No, she knew he would.

Hermione would end up shaking her head, banishing those sorts of thoughts from her head. She wanted something more than happiness, though, as the years passed and her parent's letters became more insistent that she bring a 'nice young man home for Christmas dinner,' Hermione needed more.

Passion.

It was shallow of her, she knew, and she should content herself with what she could get. She was crippled, spinsterish, irascible, and not nearly as pretty as her mother would like to think. Hermione knew part of her attitude was due, in part, that all of her girlfriends in school were married, and from the outsider's view, happy. Hermione had plenty of self-confidence, bordering on arrogance, but her self-esteem dipped on occasion. She supposed most women had moments of low self-worth. Hermione thought it to be a hormonal reaction of some sort.

But she could not think of Neville as anything other than a good friend and a better colleague when it came to working together professionally. It had to stay that way…it _had_ to.

* * *

Hermione sat on the edge of the bed, gazing at Draco Malfoy's pale face. There was still a hint of the boy she used to know and abhor in the facial features, but only just. If anything, she would have to consider him handsome, but knew that if he were conscious and aware of her, his features would twist into a sneer.

Then again, this had been the first time in years since she had looked at the man.

"We will need to move him into a smaller, darker room," she said aloud, knowing that Nyx, Malfoy's elf was awaiting instruction. Narcissa Malfoy stood at the foot of the large bed, hovering nervously.

"It will be done," the matriarch whispered.

"Doctor Longbottom can consult with the elves about specifics."

Hermione rose stiffly, and Nyx moved out of the way so Hermione could turn to Narcissa, grasping the foot post for balance. "You also need to understand, Mrs. Malfoy, that we cannot guarantee that the procedure will be successful. There is a chance that your son will never regain consciousness."

"But…" Narcissa said, her eyes meeting Hermione's, fear evident in the pale blue orbs.

"So much depends on the type of spell damage, as well as your son's fortitude. He has to want to be helped."

Narcissa's eyes narrowed, but she nodded. "I am sure that he would want help, Doctor Granger…"

"I will be honest; he may not want _my_ help."

A sad smile made the pale woman's features shift, and Hermione could see that grief and worry had aged the woman much.

"I am well aware of your dealings with my son, Doctor, but I think you will find that Draco has forgiven himself much… He is no longer the boy you might remember."

Hermione's brows quirked upward. "Oh?" she asked with true curiosity.

Narcissa Malfoy nodded again. "Despite what you might think, Doctor, Draco has been freed from the sins of his parents."

She said no more, and Hermione glanced back to the man on the bed. Time had changed many things for many people.

"This procedure… I heard you call it 'HI?'"

Hermione smiled softly. "'Hypnagogic Insertion.' It is a method of assisting a patient out of sleep. 'Hypnagogia' is the transition between waking and sleeping, but we use the phrase more in terms of the ultimate goal of the procedure. By inserting a consciousness into the mind of another, the consciousness will 'lead' the sleeper to wakefulness."

"A dream guide…" Narcissa Malfoy whispered, sitting on the foot of the bed, a finger tapping against her lower lip.

Hermione shook her head slightly. "Not exactly. Our diagnostics have not detected that your son is experiencing a dream. There is probably no dream. There is no evidence that he is experiencing REM sleep at all. Of course, when we use Hypnagogic Insertion, we will see what is going on inside his mind."

Narcissa Malfoy's lips trembled and Hermione shifted her weight on her right leg.

"Muggle physiology is slightly different from the brain's physiology in Magical folk, so I might be wrong, Mrs. Malfoy," Hermione placated, knowing that her words were honest, but she, herself, would not assume too much yet.

Narcissa Malfoy straightened, regarding Hermione with a brave face. "When do you start?"

Hermione smiled softly. "Tonight."

* * *

Draco Malfoy was like a beautiful china doll; Hermione had thought when she left his room to begin preparing. When he was a boy, Draco Malfoy was too skinny, too pale, too sharp-featured for her to ever think him beautiful. Just like Neville, Draco Malfoy had grown handsome.

Hermione felt a small sense of frustration, knowing that time had not made her any more pretty, but was already making her notice wrinkles about the corners of her eyes. Sometimes she wondered why men seemed to 'grow' into their bodies, becoming more attractive as a wine would taste better after being aged. It was unfair, she thought.

Returning to her rooms, the first thing she did was to slide her thigh out of the prosthetic and Summon her canes from the foot of her bed. She maneuvered herself into the opulent shared bath and began undressing. In the large vanity mirror over the sink, she paid little mind to her body and the scars. She was too thin, she knew, and her hair too thick and unruly. Running a bath, Hermione sat on the edge of the pool-sized tub, letting her canes drop on the black marble floor. Sliding into the water, she sighed. In water, she felt free.

Hermione relaxed, knowing that she had to keep herself focused and calm for the procedure to come, and floating on her back, arms open she stared up at the marble friezes on the ceiling—white sun and moon, putti and clouds.

Her eyes closed, and she let her mind take her to a place she associated with calm, avoiding one certain place where she knew would make her want to not delve into the abyss of Malfoy's mind...

The safe place was an Italian lake, high in the Dolomites in high summer... The water was warm at the surface, but cooler below. Glacial melt water from the snow capped mountains around the lake made the water smell fresh. This was the place she came in her mind to calm herself—Caldonazzo in summer, German tourists on the pebbled beaches, locals windsurfing, the scent of grilled trout with butter sauce, fresh bread, risotto with mushrooms…

She did not know what she might find in Malfoy's brain, if anything. As she floated, her mental eyes gazing up at the clouds before an Italian sun, she knew to expect nothing, and everything.


	4. Chapter 4

**IV.**

"You don't have to do this," he whispered in her ear, the mask in one hand, the other smoothing her hair from her face, avoiding the delicate roots that ran like red threads from points on her skull.

"I know."

Neville leaned over her, his hazel eyes boring into her golden brown ones. He was nervous, she could tell, and there were words trying to form on his lips that he would not allow himself to say.

Hermione lay flat on her back on a magically Charmed bed, dressed in a long white gown. She knew that the Malfoys were openly staring at her left leg, where the knee, shin, ankle, and foot were missing. They were also casting glances at their son, dressed in a similar gown, his head resting next to Hermione's, his right ear only a few inches from hers, his bare white feet pointing in the opposite direction. The red tendrils of root moved on its own into his long pale hair, slipping into skin and bone and into his brain.

It probably looked like 'witchcraft' to them, nonsense, quackery, but Hermione knew very well the power of the Tibetan root that acted as a conductor between minds.

"I could do it…it is not too late," Neville whispered, moving to place the golden mask over Hermione's face.

"Nev, it will be alright. The vambrace is loaded, and you'll have the recording Charm to tell you if I need outside help…"

The golden mask slipped over her face, and Hermione could see no more.

"I will be watching, Hermione. Be careful, please," Neville whispered, and Hermione felt him move away. Then, speaking to the Malfoys, Hermione listened.

"The golden vambrace on Doctor Granger's arm monitors her body, heart rate, blood pressure, etc. The corresponding bracelet on your son's arm does the same. However, the vambrace has two phials of potions that can be injected into Doctor Granger's blood stream via a hypodermic needle. The first is an agent to forcefully wake her if she should need to leave the HI session. She can activate it herself, or I can, if her heart rate and blood pressure slip above or below the normal parameters. The second potion is a calming agent, used if Doctor Granger is aware that her body is experiencing mental duress. It can only be used once. If it is not enough, she will automatically be awakened."

Hermione grinned into the underside of her mask.

"And the roots?" she heard Lucius Malfoy ask.

"They act as the primary conductor for the literal 'insertion' of Doctor Granger's consciousness into your son's mind."

"It cannot work both ways?" Narcissa Malfoy asked, a hint of concern in her voice.

"No," Neville said confidently. "I could show you the documentation on the plant itself while you wait, if you would like, Mrs. Malfoy. A summary explanation would not suffice.

I _can_ say that it is a magical plant that Doctor Granger and I procured at great expense."

Hermione blinked, feeling her eyelashes swipe into the mask over her face.

"And the masks?"

She heard Neville move nearer to her and felt his fingers brush hers as her arms rested at her sides.

"Ancient 'death' masks.

Do not be alarmed by their title, it is not so extreme as that. The masks are magical in design, fashioned by three Greek wizards who gave the gold mask the designation of Hypnos or Sleep, and the silver mask of Eos or Dawn. The masks facilitate the hypnagogic process, in Doctor Granger's case, sleeping, and for your son, waking."

Hermione listened to the shifting of bodies in the small, candlelit room, and closed her eyes at last.

"And the parchment there, with the root growing into the page?" Narcissa asked.

Again, Hermione smirked.

"It is the only route of communication Doctor Granger cognitively has with the outside. Again, I can show you Charm work and docu—"

"Doctor Granger can report by means of a piece of enchanted parchment?" Lucius Malfoy drawled speculatively.

Neville's fingers brushed against hers again. "Yes, but nothing of great detail. She will be able to relay short messages, such as successful insertion, location of the spell damage, among other things…"

"I will only believe it when I see it, Longbottom," Lucius Malfoy grumbled sourly.

Neville cleared his throat. "Then _we_ won't make you wait long, sir."

She wanted to chuckle. Lucius Malfoy still had the drawl and the wit, no matter if he was one of the most disgraced wizards in Britain and a pauper to boot, but Neville had as much wit and vigor and was not afraid to use it as an adult.

"I must make it clear that neither you or our elves should interfere in any way. The length of the procedure varies and I ask for your patience and cooperation."

Hermione could not see the Malfoys' reactions, but she could feel Neville's irritation as he moved around the bed to activate the parchment.

"Test."

 _Test_.

The words seeped up through the grain of the parchment, and Hermione could hear the Malfoys move to look.

"Any messages for the Malfoys?" Neville asked her.

 _I will do all I can…_

"It could be a trick," Lucius mumbled.

"I assure you, Mr. Malfoy, it is not."

Hermione took a breath, able to breathe quite well under the golden mask, and soon the darkness she saw behind her eyelids grew deeper.

"Let us begin," was the last thing she heard Neville say, and felt his words wind about her like a cocoon of sleep.

Hermione Granger became a mental traveler.

* * *

It was akin to flying on a broom, in this case, Harry's new Firebolt Three, almost two hundred miles per hour. Hurtling through the darkness, Hermione knew when she had come to a stop. She knew she was inside.

* * *

The first experiment had been a success in her opinion, and she had made several observations. First, in the unconscious mind, there are several rules of basic physics. Second, to be able to navigate the unconscious mind, one must be constantly aware that they are indeed not in their own reality. Third, trauma, either mental or physical, to the inserted consciousness can manifest upon the inserted physically. These observations were basic, and it was these observations Hermione remembered upon becoming physically aware again.

The process of insertion, she figured, could be easy as it had been with the first experiment of the Hypnagogic Insertion process. However, the first experiment had been with Neville, and he was fully aware of what they were trying to accomplish. The second experiment Hermione attempted was upon a patient who had been Petrified, and the process had been difficult, painful, but successful. In the first case, Hermione was inserted into a mental world, lush and green, Neville Longbottom's subconscious/unconscious world. In Neville's world, Hermione's mind had substance, and she had a body, as Neville saw it, whole, and beautiful. Hermione tried not to let her idle thoughts linger long on that world, lest she become consumed with the desire to return...

In the mind of the Petrified patient, Hermione only existed as a spirit-like entity with no body, and little interaction with the slow moving mental world inside the patient's brain. The level of interaction depended much on the mental processes of the patient, Hermione found.

In Draco Malfoy's mind, Hermione was self aware, bodily aware, and found she was lying on her back, the laws of gravity being part of the basic rule in his mind. She felt the mask on her face, and she could feel her limbs, all four.

Her hands moved, and a delight went through her. She was truly corporeal. Pulling the mask from her face, she held it tightly, feeling the smooth golden surface, the finely craved features on the surface; it was the Golden Mask of Hypnos. Opening her eyes slowly, she saw a deep blue sky above her. She dropped the mask as she sat up slowly, expecting it to fall to her lap, but found instead that it fell against her chest on a golden string about her neck.

Instead of the golden vambrace on her arm, there was only a tight gold cuff with a large piece of amber set into the engraved metal. Hermione did not examine it long, and did not touch the amber as in doing so would release the Calming Draught by some manner.

With an ease she only knew before the 'accident,' Hermione stood.

Hermione's perception became clear, and self-awareness took only a millisecond to activate fully. She stood on a great, white sandy plain. Turning slowly, she found that the plain was surrounded by jagged, black mountains seemingly leagues away. It was a desert, or a salt flat, and Hermione could feel heat all around her. Turning her attention to herself, she found she was dressed in a long amber bustled skirt, falling over two legs of flesh and bone. About her waist, she wore a darker saffron colored sash that hanged in what felt like more taffeta material. Her waist was cinched with a corset under an amber bodice that matched the skirt with a lewdly low neckline and tight fitting sleeves. However, her small feet were bare. If she had a mirror, she wondered if she would look like a throw back to the Victorian era without shoes.

She felt comfortable, which was terribly odd and terribly important. The clothing was not something her mind had constructed, and this thought gave Hermione greater hope of a successful insertion into a mind that could be rescued.

Self-image was usually made by the mind in which she would journey, at least, the costuming. Hermione was not keen on shades of yellow. Her fingers felt her hair, which was curled and pinned up from her shoulders and throat in complicated weaves and ringlets.

She turned back to face the direction in which she had initially sat up. It was with a soft gasp she found she stood before a large white marble gateway. As it was with a mind, it appeared suddenly—as suddenly as thought.

Standing on either side of the gate were two figures, dressed as the Queen's Guard. Hermione's left brow arched, and she tried not to laugh, for under the royal red, the bearskins, and holding antique bayoneted rifles were Vincent Crabbe and Greg Goyle. They were giants, and from where Hermione stood, the guard and the gate appeared to be large enough to allow a throng of giants to pass.

Walking in a dream landscape, Hermione found, was like wearing seven-league boots, and when she came near to the gate, it shrank in size, as did its sentries. The gate was just large enough for some one of her size to pass, and staring up at her with bayonets pointed were miniatures of the guard.

"Halt!" a tiny voice shouted and a sharp point of a bayonet pointed at her thigh.

"Identify yourself!"

The small representations of Malfoy's childhood thugs were comically moving to block the gate, their dull faces pointed up at her. Hermione took a step back, and they did not grow any larger.

"Is this the only gate?" she asked, her voice echoing oddly in the wide plain behind her and into the dark passage beyond the gate.

The guards regarded each other for a moment. "The only gate into the kingdom… Now, identify yourself, giant!"

Hermione rolled her eyes. Malfoy did have Lewis Carroll's work, Baum, and several others in his workshop…

"I am an emissary of a neighboring land, your master has been expecting me," she muttered with a sigh, continuing to find the sound of her own voice somehow distorted.

She had a feeling that Malfoy had somehow structured his mind to be a 'kingdom' with himself as 'king.' It was logical, she supposed, but potentially problematic if she did not play along.

"The Golden Lady? She has finally come?" a mini-Goyle asked, astonished, his bayonet falling away to point in a safer direction. Their beady eyes fell upon the mask dangling from a golden string resting just below the edge of her low collar.

The mask was a representation of her face, she noticed, glancing down, but it was far more perfect in symmetry than her own face, Hermione knew.

Hermione frowned and bent down slightly to gaze upon the small guards. "I am she."

The guards were visibly perturbed, but quickly stepped out of the path to allow her to pass. Hermione straightened and looked at the gate, which rose only as high as Hermione's waist, and watched as it began to open to the darkness beyond.

"What is beyond this gate?"

The guards shrugged. "We know not, Golden Lady…"

Hermione bit her lower lip. Mapping ones dreaming mind was a difficult matter. The laws of nature were distorted, physics, geography, could be skewed. However, if she did not enter Malfoy's mind through the 'gate' she would be no closer in curing whatever damage trapped him in his own mind.

"And who is the ruler of the kingdom?" she asked before passing through.

The guards seemed to hesitate, and then, the one that looked like Gregory Goyle spoke up. "The Ferret Prince, my lady, but…" he trailed.

"But?"

"With you being here, the Golden Lady, you will be able to mend the kingdom? That is why you are here?"

Hermione cocked her head and stared at the small representation of Crabbe and Goyle. "Yes, in fact."

The guards said nothing more, but grunted in acknowledgement and placed themselves back where they had been when Hermione approached, becoming still again. Hermione turned back to the dark tunnel, trying to peer through the gloom. She saw and heard nothing.

Her fingers smoothed her stiff skirt, then her saffron sash, brushing against the mask, and Hermione took her first step into the dark.

* * *

 _I am in._

The words seeped up through the parchment and Neville glanced to Narcissa Malfoy who stood at his side next to the bed, the parchment resting before him.

"In his dream?" the older woman asked.

"Yes."

More words appeared on the parchment, and Neville repressed a frown. Narcissa, on the other hand, did frown as if sensing his unease.

"What does that mean?"

Neville glanced to Lucius Malfoy who sat on a Conjured chair near the door, who looked to his wife at her words.

"Doctor Granger is merely relaying the parameters of the dream. That she has taken a corporeal form, that there is atmosphere within your son's mind…"

Narcissa Malfoy relaxed, Neville did not. Written in Tibetan script, next to _'corporeal form,'_ were the words _'Golden Lady, Ferret Prince.'_

Twenty minutes had passed.


	5. Chapter 5

**V.**

The mind of a witch or wizard, Hermione learned through her research, was much different from a mere Muggle's. She often wondered if there was truly a species difference between Muggles and Wizards. It would surely bolster those who preached on and on about blood purity…

The magical mind had the capacity to use magic, which manifested in different sorts of brain activity. From ancient times, wizards had purported that magic was seated in the brain, as was the soul; Hermione was not exactly the first to verify this supposition. She and Neville were the first, however, to state that magical ability had very much to do with the soul. A twisted soul could more easily perform Dark Magic, while an innocent soul could utilize more powerful, benign spells. Using Tom Riddle and Harry Potter as models, Hermione saw the correlations. Of course, she did not publish these findings.

The substance of the soul was something that would take ages to prove to a layperson, perhaps a few decades to a scholar. Hermione had read much of Emanuel Swedenborg's writings on the 'formative substances' of the soul, finding the Seventeenth Century mystic to be a bit frustrating. By stating that the soul did exist, it opened the doors for religious debate even in the Wizarding world. Not only was that, but the presumption to 'systematize' the soul was frowned upon by the Wizarding world.

All the same, the areas of psychoanalysis were a bit more complicated when it came to a magical person.

Hermione was cautiously hesitant when it came to assuming anything about Draco Malfoy.

* * *

Time meant nothing in dreams, and walking with her hands out to touch the sides of the tunnel, Hermione was not sure how long or how far she had walked.

The darkness was not exactly complete, for there was a pinprick of light far ahead, but did not seem to get any larger as Hermione walked. She was not tired, her breathing was normal, or as normal as could be inside a dream, but besides the lack of fatigue from walking, Hermione felt very real in Draco Malfoy's mind. The idea that she did not have to shift her weight to move with a prosthetic gave her a small thrill.

Then, as if the scenery was switched suddenly, Hermione's hands left the walls, only her right hand brushing against anything solid. The light improved as she walked, her fingertips finding the solid surface rounded, and then the surface was gone. She felt slightly disoriented as the light brightened more than before and she found herself in a different space, larger than the tunnel gate, yet not as open as the desert of Draco Malfoy's mind.

Sense was always important to the unconscious mind, and in Draco Malfoy's mental kingdom, Hermione was standing in the middle of an open hall. She could hear and smell the sea, but could not see it. It was a hypostyle hall, much like pictures Hermione had seen of the Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. However, the columns were larger in circumference and painted red. There was a ceiling high above, painted green, and the hall itself stretched on as far as Hermione could see in every direction.

The floor was made of dark, polished stone, but as Hermione began walking again, along one aisle, she found that there were cracks in the floor. Counting the columns she passed, at the sixty-sixth, she peered down through a large crack; one that she would not be able to pass over. Under the floor was a tumultuous black sea.

She licked her lips, vertigo washing through her mind—she supposed it was her mind and body, though she reminded herself that it was only her consciousness and not her body in the dream. With a deep breath, she tore her eyes away from the waves far below and she moved to her left and to the next aisle where there was only a small crack she could easily step over.

'Step on a crack, break your mother's back…'

Hermione was not sure where the rhyme came from, her mind or the mind she traversed.

The sound of sea came and went below her as she began counting red painted columns again. Ninety-four, ninety-five…two hundred and sixteen, two hundred and… Her fingers against the smooth columns, and at two hundred and seventeen, the texture changed. Hermione blinked, glancing to the next column. Reaching out, stepping toward the next red column, she felt wood bark.

The hall was gone with her next step; her bare feet did not fall upon the polished stone, but fell upon a soft patch of moss. Hermione's breath was taken from her for a short moment as a forest of redwood trees replaced the hall.

* * *

 _Gate, tunnel, hypostyle, forest…_

Neville's eyes read the words several times, as did Narcissa Malfoy's. Glancing up to the two recumbent figures, there was no change in their positions. Neville pressed his lips together, seeing that Malfoy's chest rose and feel normally, the silver mask over his face, unmoved. Hermione's state was the same, and then glancing to the Dicto-quill automatically recording their vitals, Neville found them normal.

"What does it mean?" Narcissa Malfoy asked finally, causing her husband to look up from the file on the Tibetan root Neville had given the older man to read.

"It is what she is seeing. A mental landscape."

Narcissa Malfoy said nothing, straightening and glancing to her son, eyes narrowed.

"It would be interesting to see…" she whispered.

Neville agreed, but did not voice his opinion. He did not know what a mental landscape would look like, though he wondered about Hermione's...

One hour had passed.

* * *

Hermione had to appreciate the detail of the redwood forest around her. She had only ever seen pictures of such a place, maybe a handful of postcard pictures of the National Park in California. To touch and stand next to a redwood tree made Hermione feel her own insignificance. Then, reminding herself that she was not truly in a redwood forest, she began to walk.

Light filtered down in patches and rays, silvery in color, yet there was no orb of a sun overhead. Hermione could feel moss and dirt under her feet, and lifting the hem of her skirt, she moved over the uneven ground. Moving in one direction, the only sound she heard was her soft footfalls. The scent of a moss and wood was poignant.

Over and up small vales between the pillar-like trees, Hermione felt a type of comfort between the majestic redwoods. It was realistic, as if Draco Malfoy had set foot in a real redwood forest, and she realized that she did not know whether he had or not. Stepping over a small creek between two low hills, a wind came suddenly, rusting her loose curls and making the taffeta of skirt whisper. Wind was unexpected.

Upon the wind was a sound, where there had been none before.

Hermione stood still, listening. There was a voice, a shout, and the sound of something heavy falling onto hard ground. Distance was indeterminable, but Hermione began to run, her feet gliding over moss and soil, twigs and leaves. Stopping behind one tree, she peered around the thick bark to a small vale where the ground was level. What she saw made her realize she was frowning, her face contorting in such a way that almost gave her pain.

There were bodies on the ground, half obscured by the light bracken, black in costume. The bodies wore strange hoods over their heads, obscuring their faces. In fact, there was no visible flesh, the bodies were covered from head to toe in what looked like black medieval armor, but malleable, akin to leather.

However, the sound and action took place a few paces away, and it was to the middle of a circle of armored men that drew Hermione's attention. The glint of silver caught the rays of light streaming down through the impossibly high canopy, and a wicked claymore sword held by one of the armored men temporarily blinded Hermione.

A male voice shouted out, and Hermione gripped the bark of the tree as a figure in black leapt high into the air, sandaled feet kicking out and glancing off the hoods of the strange armored men. Two fell, rolling on the ground, either stunned or dead, Hermione was not sure. There were seven left—armored men with various weapons, all encroaching on the central figure that held a thin sword, a katana, in gloved hands.

It was not a man fighting, however, and that was what interested Hermione the most. Although dressed like a man in sandals, baggy black trousers that reminded her of Japanese hakama, a long black jerkin with silver frog clasps, and a silver mask perched between pink ears, the fighting figure was a man sized ferret.

White fur, silver eyes, the ferret's bottlebrush tail whipped out to strike one pursuer, knocking the figure back to slam into a tree. Long gloves covered the paws that lashed at the armored men, and Hermione frowned quizzically as the man-ferret moved with the grace and precision of a martial arts master.

One by one, the black armored men fell, the last flying through the air between the trees to land just short of where Hermione stood. Hermione's bare feet shuffled as she knelt down to look closer at the figure. Emblazoned on the chest plate, over the heart, was a red symbol, an eye with the letter 'I' where the iris should have been.

Hermione reached out to touch the helmet, her fingers stretching.

"Stop!"

The sudden sound made Hermione recoil, and a shadow fell over her. With her left hand moving instinctually to the bracelet on her right wrist, her eyes snapped up to the source of the voice.

Standing over her was the man-ferret, strange silver eyes peering down at her suspiciously.

"Do you want 'him' to see you?" the ferret asked, mouth moving oddly, fangs barring dangerously.

Hermione stood, eyes narrowed, realizing that the man-ferret stood on his hind legs, small pink feet poised in wooden sandals, the hem of his baggy trousers brushing the tops of the 'geta' as they were called in Japanese. Hermione wanted to laugh at the strange hybrid of talking ferret dressed from the 'waist' down like a samurai. So far, she had only seen two caricatures of Malfoy's subconscious mind in Crabbe and Goyle. The manifestation of a man-ferret was quite significant.

It was not just the fact that Hermione was confronted with a man-sized ferret, which on its hind legs stood taller than she by a head; it was also the strange silver mask on a cord resting on the top of the ferret's head, kept there by its twitching pink ears.

"Who?"

Again, her voice was distorted, as if sounding from far away, echoing through the trees.

The man-ferret seemed to notice her voice as well, and took a step back sliding the katana back into its sheath on the belt of the hakama, its pale lips and whiskers curling back from wicked fangs.

"Who are you?" it growled, speaking the words Hermione had intended to use.

Hermione studied the ferret's face, noting that the voice was very much human. She wondered if it was Malfoy's voice, or another man's. Hermione had not heard Malfoy's voice since her schooldays, and even then, it was not quite the voice of a grown man…

"I…" she started, blinking rapidly. "They call me the Golden Lady."

'They' being the 'guards' at the gate into Malfoy's mind. She was not sure what it meant other than the clothing she wore and the mask dangling from the cord about her neck.

The ferret's long whiskers twitched, as did it ears. Silver eyes scanned her face, her clothing, before falling to the mask. Slowly, the ferret curled its body and seemed to bow.

Hermione felt as if a frown were about to settle permanently on her face like the mask on her chest. As the ferret bowed, she could see the mask on its head. It was not the mask of Eos that was upon the Draco Malfoy's face in the waking world. It was very much like the mask she had seen in Malfoy's painting in the 'studio.' A ferret mask made of silver, eyeholes open wide, as was the fashioned mouth and fangs. It was not a mask that would ever fit over the ferret's face, but a man's face.

When the ferret rose again, it reached out a gloved paw to Hermione, and despite her reservations, she took the hand and was pulled away from the black armored body on the ground.

"We have been waiting a long time for you do come, my lady…" the ferret said, helping her down the side of the low hill to the level vale, past the bodies on the ground.

"Where are you taking me?"

The ferret's gloved hand felt very much like a man's hand, and Hermione had to remind herself that in a mind's world, there were few rules when it came to logic.

"A safer place. The Inquisitors have found me in this part of the forest, more will come soon."

Hermione paid little mind as to where she was going, as the redwood forest looked very much the same in every direction, with no definite landmarks. The light was the same no matter how much time passed.

"Inquisitors?"

The ferret seemed to nod. Hermione could only see the long white fur of the ferret's 'neck' and the long tail that came from a hole in the back of the trousers, swishing back and forth behind it, but avoiding brushing against Hermione's amber colored skirts.

"Ardoc's minions…his army, his eyes, his ears, and his brutal hands."

Hermione licked her lips. "And you are?"

The ferret glanced back to Hermione, silver eye glinting as they began to move faster over the forest floor.

"Corda, but I can explain it all when we get to safety."

Hermione sighed, letting her eyes move to the forest around them again. Danger was relative, and as far as Hermione could tell, she was not the one in danger. Malfoy was the one in danger, and Hermione was not sure how, or why, yet.

Corda stopped before a tree after what seemed like a long time gliding over the forest floor, and still holding to Hermione's hand gently, he led her to stand next to him. The tree was growing next to a massive boulder, the tree and the rock seemingly ancient. The space between the two megaliths was a small area that was camouflaged by bracken and sewn leaves.

Releasing her hand, the ferret stepped toward the bracken and with a gloved hand pushed it aside like a curtain, motioning Hermione to enter. Hermione stepped into a type of lean-to, a cubbyhole between roots and rock, where she saw a small fire pit, and a bower made into the side of the tree. When the cover was back in place, Hermione found herself in a dark space, feeling the ferret move around her. A spark of light startled her and soon she found that the ferret had somehow lit a small fire in the pit.

"Please, have a seat."

The ferret motioned to the moss filled bower, and Hermione gathered her skirts and sat down on the outlying root edge. The ferret sat next to the fire, like a man, and regarded Hermione with mirror like eyes for a long while.

"How did you enter the kingdom? Through the gates?"

Hermione folded her hands on her lap, and nodded.

"And you passed through the Sea Hall without being noticed?"

Biting the inside her of lower lip, Hermione nodded again. Then, cocking her head slightly, she spoke. Her voice was still a strange echo, but softer, contained more to the lean-to.

"You said your name was…"

The ferret seemed to smile, but Hermione was not sure as it barred its fangs again. "Corda. By way of proper introduction, I should say, Corda, Lord Chamberlain to the Prince of the Land, but that is a title I have recently been stripped…"

As if seeing something about her expression Hermione had not known was formed, the ferret sighed and rubbed a gloved hand over its sharp snout and through its whiskers.

"Being an outsider, I suppose it makes little sense to you. You…you are a legend to this kingdom, and your coming has been expected ever since the Blight came."

Hermione straightened—a clue, finally? "Blight?"

The ferret, Corda, nodded. "I should start from the beginning."

Shifting on the leafy ground, the ferret leaned back into the boulder, silver eyes moving to the fire. Hermione followed the creature's gaze, the flickering reds and oranges giving only light, but not heat.

"It started a while ago, when the Prince noticed a darkness…"

The fire shifted and Hermione's amber eyes blinked as in the flame she thought she saw a shape, a man shape. It was indistinct, no features except for atop the fiery head was a crown, a representation. Standing with arms akimbo, the Prince seemed to look at Hermione with embers for eyes.

"At the edge of the High Mountains, out past the Crystal Sea, a darkness appeared where there had been none before. The Prince left the Silver Keep to see what had happened…"

The fire shape moved, riding on the back of a horse shaped beast with wings over a blue flame sea…

"He left me and his general, the High Torturer, in the Silver Keep to wait…"

Two shapes, a ferret and another man shape stood on a high battlement, looking in the direction of the blue flame sea…

"We waited for many days and nights, as there are only days and nights at the Silver Keep, but the Prince did not return. The darkness was growing larger, so large that we could see it from the windows of the highest turret. The two of us, Ardoc, and myself considered what we should do if the Prince were somehow lost. Then, the Prince returned, but changed…"

The flame shifted, and upon a silvery fire throne sat the Prince with the ferret and the High Torturer kneeling before the Prince's feet.

"The Prince did not know us, feared us…and Ardoc only kept in check by the Prince, rebelled."

A large, purplish flame rose up from the pit, towering over the Prince and the ferret, and with a crackle, the fire held no more scenes for Hermione.

"The Prince secluded himself in his turret; Ardoc gathered his Inquisitors and drove me away. Ardoc has no care about the growing Blight, or the fact the kingdom is threatened. Ardoc revels in the darkness, as it is his true domain.

So, here I am, on the far edge of the kingdom, barely able to keep myself intact. My only hope was that you would come, as the legends foretold, and here you are…"

Hermione inhaled deeply, eyes moving to the ferret.

Corda, Ardoc…anagrams.

"The Prince, his name is Draco?"

The ferret hissed suddenly, standing, startling Hermione so that she grasped her golden bracelet, but did not touch the amber setting.

"We never speak his name!" the ferret hissed, his body curling so his fangs were only inches from Hermione's face.

Then, as if collecting himself, Corda backed away and sat against the bolder again, his tail swishing back and forth anxiously.

"I apologize, Lady, you would not know the laws of this land…" the ferret whispered as the fire lowered to almost embers. "The name is taboo, only spoken if the Prince gives your permission to speak it. Names have power…"

Hermione's fingers slipped back to fold in her lap again, and she nodded.

"The 'Inquisitors,' they wish to kill you?"

The ferret nodded, "Me and anything else that would prevent Ardoc from taking the throne. He will take it at any time now, the Prince is weak, and I have been away for too long. I am surprised that this land has not fallen into total darkness already."

Hermione sighed softly, the residual echoes of her voice fading.

"I will take you to Great Father, from there we can find a safe path to the Silver Keep…" the ferret murmured, his voice weary.

"What must I do?" she asked as the silver eyes grew heavy.

The fire crackled, almost in answer, but the ferret's eyes closed and he said in a near whisper: "Heal us…"


	6. Chapter 6

**VI.**

Hermione watched over Corda as he slept, the dappled light beyond the lean-to never changing. The concept of time was relative, and Hermione knew that what would be hours in Draco Malfoy's mind were possibly only minutes or seconds in the waking world. However, she took the time to think, assess what she had learned so far.

Three distinct entities were Draco Malfoy. First, was Corda, the ferret, who, by her so far short encounter, was benign in nature. The second was Ardoc, malevolent. Lastly, there was the Ferret Prince, Draco. Hermione worried her lower lip as she considered the possibilities. Three distinct entities, the parts of Freud's psychic apparatus—ego, id, and super-ego. Which was which?

Ardoc, by Corda's vague account, was surely id. For id to take on a metaphysical manifestation told Hermione that Draco Malfoy had a distinct and strong unconscious drive. 'A dark, inaccessible part of our personalities,' Freud had written.

Hesitation coursed through Hermione, her own psychic apparatus telling her to be wary.

Which was Corda, if her theory was correct? Ego or super-ego? More importantly, why were the three parts distinct, separate, and operating as unique parts? She needed to know more about this 'Blight.'

Settling deeper into the bower, Hermione rested back into the redwood tree, finding it substantial and very real. She had to keep touching the smooth golden bracelet to remind herself of where she was… She had almost slipped out of her own reality once before, but that had been a place of-no, she could _not_ think of it, would not think of it! Hermione was in a dark territory of Draco Malfoy's soul, a stranger in an even stranger land.

Only in a dream could a man sized ferret wear clothes, speak the Queen's English, and fight like a martial arts expert. Hermione smirked, only in Draco Malfoy's dreams.

She studied the creature as it slept, gloved paws and arms crossed before its jerkin clad chest. Like a ferret, the creature's body was elongated, the white tail swishing as it rested over a leg. Clawed paws fit into man-sized geta, and the small pink ears twitched, as a ferret's would. Hermione knew little about the actual animal, which she supposed would be _mustela putorius furo_ , or the ferret, but she found Malfoy's mental representation to be, for lack of a better word—cute.

Mimicking the creature's posture, Hermione folded her arms, brushing against the mask on her chest. Blinking, she pushed it aside, and glanced to the mask still resting on the top of Corda's head.

The creature snorted in its sleep and she grinned, as she tucked her legs under her skirts. However, as the fire began to die, Hermione's vision seemed to shift, and in the near darkness with only the subdued forest light streaming in through the cover, the face of the ferret changed for only a moment. In that moment, she saw a man's sleeping face.

The embers crackled, the man's face was gone, and silver eyes blinked open.

"How long…?"

The sinuous body stretched, and Corda stood on his hind legs, glancing to the cover of the lean-to.

"Not long," she whispered, once again startled by the sound of her echoing voice.

Corda nodded, and turned to the cover, peering through the holes to the outside.

"I don't think the Inquisitors noticed you, we have not been pursued."

"And if they _had_ noticed me?" Hermione asked, moving to stand, brushing loose moss from her skirts.

Corda turned slowly, his whiskers and ears twitching unpleasantly.

"You would not be here, now, that much I can say."

Grasping her hand, Hermione gasped as Corda pulled her from the lean-to and they began to run.

* * *

Neville noted the time—two hours in.

The words _'blight,'_ _'psychic apparatus,_ ' _'aberration,_ ' had been Hermione's last message on the parchment. Neville was musing over the words as Narcissa Malfoy came into the room with a cup of tea in her hand. He noticed that her pale hand shook as he took the stout concoction from her and tried to smile. Lucius Malfoy had left the room, without a word, after Neville conveyed the words.

Narcissa Malfoy took her husband's place on the Conjured chair by the door, her eyes softening as she watched her son's gown clad chest rise and fall gently.

"My husband worries, Doctor Longbottom, and despite appearances, that worry makes him restless. I do hope you are not offended by Lucius' behavior."

Neville held the warm porcelain in his hands, and smiled. "Not at all, Mrs. Malfoy. This process takes time. I can only imagine how restless Mr. Malfoy must be, and you, for that matter."

Narcissa Malfoy's lips thinned into a wan smile as Neville took his first sip of tea. He was grateful for the distraction of tea, and he hoped that his own worry was not showing on his face. He could not let Narcissa Malfoy know how Hermione's words troubled him.

'Blight,' he had no idea what it could mean, but the other words… Neville had a suspicion that two hours would barely begin to be enough time for Hermione to bring Draco Malfoy anywhere near a true hypnagogic state.

* * *

The redwood forest flashed past Hermione as she ran behind Corda, his gloved hand softly folded about her own.

Running in a dream landscape, Hermione did not tire and her bare feet did not hurt. Running, perhaps, was not the best word for how she moved—she glided though her legs moved to keep up.

Corda did not seem to be exerting himself either, his silvery white fur gleaming in the strange filtered light through the high canopy of leaves. On occasion, a silver eyes would glance back at her and then the pointed face would turn back to focus on the unseen path he was taking.

"Who is Great Father?" she asked over the wind about their moving bodies.

Corda glanced back again and it seemed he smiled, or as close to a smile a ferret could manage.

"A guru, a staunch ally of the Prince," he replied simply.

Hermione mulled over the words even as the landscape began to change around them. She had no sense of direction, unable to see the sun or that the fiery orb of dream substance had moved at all.

'Great Father' had a majestic sound to the name. A guru? A spiritual guide, a mystic, a wise man, a counselor… Who would the 'Great Father' be in Draco Malfoy's mind? Lucius? Severus Snape?

Hermione conceded, somewhat begrudgingly, that she knew so little about Draco Malfoy after the War. She did not know much of his true motivations as she had the night Voldemort was defeated. Surely, these motivations had changed as Draco Malfoy grew older. Her own motivations had changed…

The redwood trees began to be replaced by shorter trees, and between the trees, the bracken thickened. The air was growing warmer, balmier. Teak trees, babul, also known as thorn mimosa, and _ficus religiosa_ or the Sacred Fig, sprung up around her. She was entering a type of jungle clime.

"The Great Father is an ally, but he has not moved to help the Prince?" Hermione ventured again, feeling that her face and neck was growing damp from the humidity and not from sweat.

"He practices ahimsa, non-violence toward all living things, whether mental or physical…" Corda's voice sounded as they pace began to slow as the thorny bracken and damp leaves around them closed in.

Ahimsa, a Buddhist, Hindu, and Jainist doctrine, one that Hermione had seen in action during her travels to Tibet years before. All life is sacred to those who follow the doctrine, and Hermione felt her mouth move into a strange smile that this Great Father of Draco Malfoy's mental apparatus would have such a character.

It was as she was thinking this that her run slowed to a walk, Corda still holding her hand firmly in his gloved paw. The soft pressing of her bare feet into damp, fragrant soil, felt very real, and she followed the ferret along a winding path under the thickly leafed trees.

"How will Great Father help us?"

She knew she was probably asking too many questions, but it was part of her investigation. Her voice still echoed strangely around her, but she was beginning to grow accustomed to the sound.

Corda had slowed them to a gentle walk, and in the walk, Hermione could press nearer so her skirts brushed against his hakama. With the nearness, she could smell the creature. Corda smelled like cedar, sweet and earthy.

"He will advise us on a safe path to the Silver Keep, warn us of any dangers that might appear along the way. Great Father, though he lives so far from the center of the kingdom, can see every place here."

Hermione nodded as Corda fell silent. She wondered if he was annoyed by her questions, but the tone of his voice was kind and willing to explain.

To the creature, she was the Golden Lady, and though she could not immediately see the implications of what the title might mean, she knew Corda revered her somehow.

Then, Corda stopped, causing Hermione to collide gently into his side.

Hermione's eyes moved into the bracken and trees before them, so dense that she could not see what Corda seemed to be seeing. Corda moved again, squeezing her hand gently and pulled her off whatever path they seemed to be taking.

A structure melted from the trees, and Hermione realized it was a structure set into a rock face of a low mountain she had been unable to see from the teak and bubil trees. The structure was cut from the rock that was a bluish shade of limestone or sandstone; Hermione could not discern which. The structure reminded her of the rock carved temples of Ellora or Elephanta, ornate, ancient, and exotic.

Under the roof of the carved ceiling, set upon a low platform was a strange tableau of figures. A central figure sat higher than the others, three on each side, and behind the central figure was a tree that grew from the rock, and stood like a barrier to a darkened passage cut further back into the rock.

Lucius Malfoy was the central figure, but he was not Lucius Malfoy, but Shiva Dakshinamurthy, the aspect of the Hindu destroyer god that represented supreme awareness, understanding, and knowledge. He did not have two arms, but four, and his skin was not blue as Shiva's would have been, but pure white porcelain. His long hair floated about his head like languid tresses floating on water, and around his body, there was a strange, ethereal glow of gold.

Hermione was in awe.

The figures sitting on either side of Lucius, Great Father, were familiar faces—Anton Dolohov, Crabbe Sr., Goyle Sr., on Lucius' left, and Rodolphus Lestrange, Augustus Rookwood, and Walden Macnair on the right. All were frozen in tableau, all dressed as lesser Hindu gods or devotees.

It was an eerie scene. Hermione shuddered involuntarily at seeing Anton Dolohov's face. It was a face that she would never forget.

As for Lucius, his four arms were poised. In his upper hands, he held a rosary in his right hand and a perpetually flickering flame in his left. As for his lower hands, his right was poised in a specific mudra while he held a roll of parchment with illegible script in his left. His left leg was crossed at the knee over the right, and the right foot rested on, surprisingly, a small figure of a very uncomfortable Peter Pettigrew.

Hermione tried not to laugh.

Corda drew her close, just to the base of the stereobate leading up to the platform approximate three feet higher from where Hermione stood. Corda released her hand, and bent his long body to bow to Lucius.

The tableau did not shift.

"Great Father, I have brought the Golden Lady," the ferret said simply, a gloved hand over his heart.

Hermione studied the face of Lucius Malfoy and saw that his grey eyes seemed to flicker at Corda's words. Then, as if warmth sufficed the porcelain of his skin, the Great Father's eyes moved down to look at her.

"We ask for a boon, Great Father, for the kingdom is in dire need," Corda continued, his voice confident, yet soft.

Lucius' arms did not move, but his head did, his chin tipping down to gaze more fully at Hermione.

"Lord Chamberlain…"

The voice that came from Lucius was a purr, so resonant that it forced Hermione to instinctually take a step back. It was how her voice sounded in this dreamscape, odd, and echoing through every fiber of her dream body.

Corda also reacted, but did so by catching her hand in his again as if to keep her neat or keep her steady.

"Corda, the wise and brave…"

The words were slow, each enunciated through the purr, but, to Hermione's surprise, Lucius' lips did not move and either did the other figures still stiff in tableau.

"We have been meditating for a long while, and we have seen what it is that has brought you so deep into the jungles."

Corda bowed again, but Hermione did not. Lucius' eyes were still upon her, and though the orbs had life, the rest of his body did not. The eyes were curiously studying her face and her body, trying to peer into her when there was only her mental projection existing in Draco Malfoy's mind.

"You seek safe passage to the Silver Keep?"

"Yes, Great Father," Corda answered.

Lucius said nothing for a long while, his eyes growing distant. When he spoke again, it was to Hermione alone.

"You have come to heal the Blight, Golden Lady, yet to do so; you will endure great discomfort, nay, pain."

Hermione frowned, but did not speak.

"Do you know what the Blight is, Golden Lady?"

She had an assumption, one that seemed to the easiest explanation. The spell damage that had left Draco Malfoy's mind lost inside a dream seemed to be this 'Blight' Corda mentioned. However, there was no physical evidence to such a trauma. The Blight, she assumed, was something psychic and unseen by the diagnostics Neville had performed.

The psychic damage had separated what was to be a whole of Malfoy's psychic apparatus, but as to why it was preventing him from regaining consciousness was still a mystery.

And how to heal it?

"Yes," she answered finally, and the echo in her voice rivaled Lucius'.

The figure sitting above Hermione, smiled knowingly, and the expression was exactly that of the physical representation of Lucius Malfoy in the waking world.

"Do you have the wisdom and wit to do battle with those who want the Blight to spread?

She did not know, not yet.

As if sensing her answer, Lucius, Great Father, moved his upper left arm, the perpetual flame flickering as he stretched the hand toward her.

"You shall be tested, Golden Lady. You shall be tested before we will provide any passage for you and the Lord Chamberlain. Behind us is a long and perilous passage to Salisbury Plain, by which you will be able to reach the Silver Keep and the Prince safely.

However, you must reassure us that you are who the Lord Chamberlain claims you are…"

Again, Hermione frowned. Salisbury Plain? Test?

The Great Father was not exactly Shiva Dakshinamurthy, but something more like baby Krishna stealing ghee.

"Riddle me this…"

Hermione suppressed another laugh.

"It is known by both masculine and feminine names,

And burns up without rain;

Originates from a man and goes into a man,

But no one has been able to guess what it is."

Hermione blinked at the rapidity of the riddle and for a moment her mind reeled.

She was in Wonderland, after all.

Corda's hand squeezed hers reassuringly and slowly; she went over the verses in wherever her mind truly was.

"A river," she answered and her voice made the air vibrate around her.

Lucius said nothing for a moment, the flame in his hand flickering at the vibration of her voice.

"It is as light as a feather, yet no man can hold it for long?"

Hermione smirked.

"A breath."

Lucius' flame flickered again, and the riddles came again, five times, and Hermione was becoming annoyed. Every riddle was one a child would know, and she never took long to answer.

Finally, Lucius' face hardened and the hand that held the flame moved back into position.

"The path is open to you, Golden Lady."

Hermione sighed softly.

"Then you believe that I am the Golden Lady?" she asked.

Lucius' lips twisted into an awkward smile.

"The Golden Lady is a creature of power and wit. We have no more doubts…"

Hermione then realized that the number of riddles numbered the same number of figures, excluding the small representation of Pettigrew. Did each 'god' or 'devotee' ask their riddles through Lucius?

"But beware, the canyon is dark, and in the dark, danger lies. Do not linger long in the stone way, run, if you must, but make no sound."

Hermione expected Lucius to say more, but already his face grew solid and unmoving. However, the six devotees seemed to glide away from either side of Lucius, Levitating to allow Corda to pull her up the steps and to the tree behind Lucius. The floating tendrils of pale gold hair seemed to wave a sort of farewell as darkness fell around Hermione.

It was strange, if not the strangest experience she had yet in Draco Malfoy's dream.


	7. Chapter 7

**VII.**

Neville had to pause to think of how to explain Shiva Dakshinamurthy to Narcissa Malfoy when the words appeared on the parchment. The older woman had Conjured a stool to sit next to Neville as together they went over the words and phrases that came out of Hermione's unconscious mind.

"Lucius as a type of counselor?" Narcissa mused to herself when Neville finished his explanation.

Neville said nothing, consulting the vital readings, finding that all levels were at the norm. So far, nothing Hermione experienced in Draco Malfoy's mind had upset her.

Two hours and forty-five minutes had passed.

Lucius Malfoy had not returned to the darkened room, but Neville did not mind that detail. He found that Narcissa Malfoy, however, soothed his worries. By being able to speak with her, his worry of how long the process would take, diminished.

A sound interrupted Neville's further explanation of the Hindu deity and he rose so suddenly that Narcissa Malfoy gasped.

He had just checked the telemetry readings only moments before, and suddenly, a small alarm attached to the vambrace on Hermione's arm was sounding. Her heart rate had increased exponentially; her chest was rising and falling faster—agitation.

"What is it?" Narcissa breathed, she too on her feet.

Neville said nothing more a moment, his eyes boring into the parchment where only one word appeared.

 _Inquisitor._

* * *

It was Ebbor Gorge, the canyon the Great Father had mentioned, and high above was light from a flat grey sky, casting the canyon into deep shadow in places.

The ground was soft underfoot, and as Corda drew her along the narrow passages, she remembered not to speak and keep up the near run the man-ferret had established. Corda glanced back often, and at time pressed a gloved finger to what seemed to be his lips for silence.

Hermione only nodded, still feeling dazed at the image of Lucius Malfoy as 'Great Father.' Her assumption had been correct about the designation, but she had not expected that Lucius Malfoy would be some sort of guru to Draco Malfoy. Then again, as children, it was clear that Draco Malfoy idolized his father in some fashion. As an adult, however, Hermione was not sure as to what role Lucius Malfoy played in Draco Malfoy's life.

Draco Malfoy was, by his parents' words, a responsible sort, taking care of the family, working to reestablish the family after so many years of social and financial persecution. That in itself endeared Malfoy to Hermione, if only slightly. It was crystal clear that Draco Malfoy cared for his family. Hermione would never forget Lucius Malfoy's actions on the night of the Battle of Hogwarts either.

Family first.

And then she thought of Neville and the lasting image of his deed that night...

Passing deep crevasses in the canyon face, Hermione could see darkness with in. While she traversed what seemed to be the main artery of the canyon, there were narrower, darker passages branching off. These branches became numerous the deeper she moved with Corda whose hold on her hand was beginning to cause an odd pain.

Corda hastened his pace, and Hermione followed. The quickening alerted her to some sort of distress in the creature, something that was beginning to be sensed on the edges of her own perception.

Then they were running, just as something behind her seemed to chase.

As the walls came in closer, Hermione realized that part of the reason she could see the stark contrast in the dark crevasses was due to her body.

She glowed golden, albeit faintly. Hermione had no time to consider this strange fact for suddenly, something knocked her hand away from Corda's and her body collided against the near blue stonewall.

Corda whirled, and his fanged, ferret mouth opened, but he did not speak.

Great Father had said not to make a noise.

However, the ferret hissed just as Hermione rolled against the wall so that her back was against the icy stone. Before her, beside her, were two blots of darkness.

Corda began to move, several paces away from her, his gloved hand reaching out for Hermione. She whimpered, stretching out her left arm for Corda's hand when thick black arms, like steel bands, clamped around her waist and the air, if it were truly air, was squeezed from her lungs.

The swiftness by which she was pulled forced out a choking gasp, and the canyon, the grey light, and Corda were gone. It was in this pull that she realized what the dark blots were, seeing the insignia on their chests and feeling the hard, yet malleable leather armor move about her.

Inquisitors.

Air moved around her in gusts and Hermione knew that she was literally being whisked away down one of the branches passages off the canyon, down into darkness so complete that her wide eyes were not able to adjust.

There was no sound, only air, and the arms that held her, were unmovable. When she could breathe again, it was to the scent of dankness, dampness, a subterranean scent of earth and water. It reminded her of the dungeons at Hogwarts.

The darkness physically pressed against her, just as she was being pressed into the cool armor of the Inquisitor who had snatched her from Corda's hand. Claustrophobia, something Hermione never had before that moment, made her heart pound. Her arms were pinned so tightly to her sides that she could not reach the bracelet to try to calm herself, wake herself.

Hermione knew that she was moving through space, a dark space, in Malfoy's mind. She had to remind herself that is was not real, not in the metaphysical sense, and that if she could not control the reactions in her mind and body, Neville would stop the process.

She was not sure how far she had come, but so far, she had met a part of Malfoy's self in Corda, and a representation of Lucius Malfoy that seemed important to Malfoy's psychic apparatus.

The Inquisitors were an extension of Ardoc, the obvious manifestation of id.

Hermione felt her body relax, her heart calm, her distress diminishing. She had to be logical.

Neville's mind, in which the psychic apparatus was complete, was never so perilous—nebulous and at times obscured, but never dangerous to her. She would have to be careful of herself from now on…

Meeting the id was necessary, though Hermione half-heartedly wished it had been on her own terms. Her abduction, logically, told her that Malfoy's id was aware of her now, and she would have to be particularly careful.

Just as she thought this, the carrying motion stopped, the arms disappeared, and she flew across a dark space to land gently on a smooth, stone ground.

She knew not to expect anything in such an unexpected world in Malfoy's mind. However, as light seemed to grow around her, the sound of a door shutting made her jump.

Hermione was in the middle of a small room with black and white tile under her hands and legs. The light, as if a stage light rose in the room from tasteful recessed Muggle lighting, and she realized as her eyes adjusted, she was in a waiting room.

Rising to her feet, she snorted a laugh as she found the room had only two doors, one behind, and one before. 'No exit' had been the door she had been tossed through, and the adjacent door had a sign in near illegible, yet familiar script that read 'Office of the High Torturer.'

The room had white walls and no decoration. Benches rested against the walls, but Hermione was alone in the room. The only other thing of interest in the room was a sign to her left that read, again, in that near illegible script 'Thou Shall Not Grovel.'

She did laugh then, smoothing her skirts and adjusting the mask resting on her chest.

Then…the door before her opened with a whinging of hinges and darkness lay beyond.

* * *

"What happened?" Narcissa Malfoy asked as Neville began weaving his wand over Hermione's prone body.

Neville sighed. "Something she encountered startled her, but she calmed herself instead of using the vambrace."

"Is she…?" Narcissa began, sinking back down onto her Conjured stool.

Neville ended the diagnostic spell and stepped back to sink into his chair, feeling relieved, but tired.

"She's fine."

"Was it something in Draco's mind that caused her to react so?"

Neville nodded, glancing to the parchment, which read nothing but the last word 'Inquisitor.' He could not imagine what it meant, and he did not like it one bit.

* * *

She had no choice but to go through the open door, seeing there was no door handle on the opposite door. Her journey was truly one way.

Naturally, she was hesitant as she approached the open door and the darkness inside, but she did not want to 'wait' indefinitely either.

When she began to fall, for there was no floor beyond, she kept her emotions in check and allowed herself to fall. She glided, in truth, through the darkness, her skirts flapping in the air. Hermione reminded herself over and over: this is a dream, this is a dream… The mental mantra worked well as her fall began to slow until she did not fall at all, but floated in the darkness like a glowing gold mote of dust.

She tried to move her limbs, to search for ground, but her body would not move. Physics and no physics, she realized.

How long she floated, she could not say, but the darkness around her did not set her ill at ease. Somehow she felt a great warm comfort, as if falling in slow motion in one of her own dreams.

Could she fall asleep inside another's dream? Or fall unconscious?

As if in answer, Hermione felt the air move before her face, and felt excruciating pain on the back of her head, so excruciating that she lost all conception of space, time, and self.

She had been knocked unconscious by a vicious blow.

* * *

Neville was grinding his teeth as the telemetry readings spiked again for just a moment and the fell below norms. He wished he could see what was happening to her, why her brain wave patterns flattened out, why she was not seeing…

He said nothing to Narcissa Malfoy, but knew that she was aware of another situation as Draco's telemetry spiked and his heart began to beat faster, his chest rising and falling faster.

Neville could not make himself be concerned about his patient at that moment.

Moving to Hermione's side, he touched her arm, his fingers moving down to the vambrace. He could not wake her, not until her brain wave patterns spiked normally. Waking her too soon could leave her in a vegetative state just like the pale man near her.

As soon as the patterns picked up, he would forcefully wake her, damn the consequences when Hermione realized what he had done.

Three hours had passed, and Draco Malfoy was nowhere near to waking.

* * *

Hermione's eyes opened with a snap, and there was light. In the light, she could see a ceiling over her head, but not a ceiling of any interior she knew. It was the roof of a cave and the distance between her horizontal body and the furthest discernable point above her was indeterminable.

Light came from points around her, candles, she realized as she turned to her head to the right side.

There was the sound of water dripping far away and a gentle breeze high above her. There was also a scent; one that elicited dark memories of a time and place that she knew she would never forget: the dungeons/basement of Malfoy Manor.

Blood, bile, bone, death, pain, and true agony…

She became self-aware all over again, and this time, she was not whole. Manacles bound her hands above her head, stretching her body taut over a cold stone table or dais. Her right leg was also held down at the ankle, but her left leg… It was, as she knew it in the waking world, a stump above where her knee should have been.

The golden mask rested off to the right side of her breasts, but her golden dress, the pins that held her hair, they were gone, and Hermione was bound nude and vulnerable in a strange cave.

Her ordeal, why she was in the cave, came back to her slowly, causing the back of her head to throb as it rested onto the surface beneath her.

The slide of metal against metal had Hermione's head rolling to her left, and there, beyond the white wax candles, was a scene she had viewed before.

A bare-chested man with silvery skin and well-defined muscles sat on a black stone throne. Long, matted silver hair fell over wide shoulders and on the face, obscuring all the facial features except the line of the strong jaw, was a mask of silver.

Draco Malfoy, the painting she had seen in his workshop with the ferret mask, was sitting on a throne thirty or more feet away from where she lay. In his hands, which rested on the arms of the throne, were the two thin daggers, one serrated the other like a stiletto, both bloody and covered in gore.

There was a sharp noise, like a cat crying, and the figure rose, wearing only a pair of satiny trousers, much like Corda's hakama. She was not sure how he could see through the solid mask, but it seemed he did as he glided barefoot over the wet cave floor.

Hermione blinked as the masked face leaned over as if to study her. However, his hands, still grasping the daggers, moved to place the tips into her left side.

The scream that came from her throat shook the cave, literally.

The masked man paused and pulling the daggers from the fleshy part of her side, just above her hip and below her ribs, dropped them on the table haphazardly.

This was Ardoc, Hermione realized, the id.

"You are the Golden Lady."

It was not a question, and the voice, which was strangely like an ancient whisper, wound about her like Devil's Snare. Her left thigh jerked, and she felt blood splash her hips.

The daggers had been bloody because they had been used to remove her leg—again.

Hermione could not see the severed limb, but she felt its loss keenly.

"I know your real name."

Pain.

Grinding her teeth, she repeated her mantra— _only a dream, only a dream_.

"I know why you are here…"

The mask was only an inch from her nose, but Hermione slammed her eyes shut.

The High Torturer Ardoc, the id, _it was only a dream_ , she screamed to herself without making a sound.

Cold fingers traced the midline of her body from her pelvis to her throat. The same fingers curled around her throat and squeezed until her eyes bulged open.

"You will never leave this place," the ancient, whispering voice informed her.

Only a dream. The manacles that held her wrists were not real; the fingers about her throat were not real. She could not breathe, could not move, and the pain, searing and raw, and made her lack of air more real however.

Then the hand was gone from her throat and her body convulsed as oxygen filled her lungs. Hermione's vision swam with tears, but she could still see the silver mask hovering over her.

Unable to sense how, Hermione felt her body stretch as the chains and manacles pulled taut so that her joints cracked and her body was lifted off the cold stone under her back.

"Granger…" he whispered, and the sound of her name was like a physical assault.

Again daggers sank into her stretched and strained body with slow precision, straight into her intestines and bladder. The odor that came up from her own body was so foul that besides the pain that focused all other senses, Hermione gagged.

 _Only a dream…_

The masked id left the daggers in her gut and ran his hands down her sides to grasp her hips.

"Only…" she hissed as his fingers scored her hips and she felt his pelvis press against her own. "…a…" Beyond the odor and pain she could feel the unmistakable sensation of his arousal against her. "…dream…"

He laughed at her, and for a fleeting moment, there was tenderness as he stroked her bare flesh. The laughter echoed through the cavern and just as she felt his fingers prod inside, thrust, and then they were gone, as were the daggers in her gut and the chains about her limbs.

Without hesitation, she grasped her left arm. The cuff with the amber piece was gone, but she could feel the vambrace under her fingers, invisible, but real. She touched the mechanism to wake her from this nightmare, but before she could depress the button, a swift blow to her face sent her body rolling across an icy, damp floor.

"I will not let you go…" he said, and Hermione groaned as she felt blood fill her mouth.

Somehow she had willed her injuries away, but her leg was still a stump, oozing infection, though logically she knew there was none. The blood, however, was very real, and as she scanned the cavern for Ardoc, she could not wish the blood away.

She had rolled off the dais, she found, and lay in the floor at the foot of Ardoc's throne. The next blow came from above and behind and she felt her teeth crack as her face smashed into the cavern floor, making her own gold mask send a hollow noise at impact…

Again, she reached and held her left arm where the invisible vambrace should be, and freedom.

Ardoc pressed her down to the floor, his hands pinning her arms above her head, his legs forcing her thighs apart. She could see her own reflection in his mask, and see the fear in her own eyes.

"Only a dream," she hissed as he pressed his weight upon her.

"My dream," his voice rasped through the mask.

Hermione whimpered as he insinuated himself, nude and hard, against her.

And in a flash, she knew she had been too arrogant, too self-assured that she could take on the raw, unadulterated power of Draco Malfoy's id. How foolish she had been…

The penetration was swift, and Hermione screamed, her body convulsing. It was not like any of her dreams; the sensation of being filled was in no way pleasant.

As suddenly as the sting of penetration had reverberated through her body, Ardoc was gone, the painful intrusion gone, and in its place was only blinding light.

* * *

Neville gasped another curse as he ran his wand over Hermione's body. The seizure had been violent and devastating to witness, and he knew that Narcissa Malfoy was nearly in hysterics from seeing it. The blood that tinged the froth coming from under the mask was shocking, but if he removed it, Neville risked losing the one thing he loved more…

"Wha…what is happening?" she whispered, frightened, interrupting Neville's thoughts.

Hermione's right hand had risen and reached for her vambrace twice, and both times her hand had fallen back to her side. After the second movement, the seizure startled both Neville and Narcissa.

"She…She seems to be fighting something…" was all Neville could manage. It was in no way a scientific observation, but by the readings he was receiving—increased adrenaline, increased heart rate, blood pressure spiking, absorption rate increasing, he had no other explanation.

When the seizure had ended, Neville pressed a small ruby button in the vambrace to calm her, and quickly ran his wand over Hermione's body again.

No affect.

Neville checked the vambrace. It was attached correctly, the calming draught had entered her body, but it was having no affect whatsoever.

"Damn it," he muttered, and hesitated.

If he woke her now…

"Wake her, Longbottom, please…" Narcissa pleaded softly, her hand grasping his sleeve.

Neville glanced down at the pale woman, and set his jaw.

Depressing the button that would release the combination of draughts to pull Hermione out of HI, Neville sighed.

Nearly four hours had passed.


	8. Chapter 8

**VIII.**

Hermione felt her body being lifted upward in a warm embrace, and in that embrace all the pain was gone. She idly wondered if she had found her back to that place...that place with Neville...

The cavern that had been designed for compounded horrors filled with silver light that drove every bit of darkness away. In this scourging of darkness, Hermione could hear Ardoc's voice lift into angry scream, a familiar sound from her childhood…

"Hold tight!" another voice came, one near her ear.

Her body shimmered and the gown that had initially appeared after her insertion seemed to spring from her flesh and cover her body. A modicum of dignity was restored as her body was lifted higher from the stone floor.

As she turned to look into the face of her rescuer, she again could only see her own face in a reflection of silver.

The cavern seemed to melt away around them, and slowly, though she was unable to truly see what was happening, the figure that held her so gingerly, placed her bare foot, singular, on a field of soft grasses.

Her left leg had not reappeared and as soon as the silver light faded she fell against her savior, falling with him to the ground.

"Oof!" he said, and Hermione's face buried into what felt like a solid man's chest, but as a gloved hand pushed the silver ferret mask up, she found she was looking into the face of a man-sized ferret.

"Corda…" she breathed and quickly scrambled off his body to sit with her skirts about her waist and her own gold mask pressed into her ribs painfully.

The man-ferret leapt to his feet, scanning the area around where they fell, and apparently finding it safe, knelt at Hermione's foot, his silver eyes narrowing at the stump her left leg.

Hermione also began studying her leg, finding as she had always found in the waking world, scarred and hideous.

"My lady…" Corda whispered with a hint of dismay as his gloved hand reaching out to touch her thigh.

Hermione licked her lips and hiccupped, raising a hand to ward off his touch. The hiccup quickly turned into tears.

The man-ferret could only watch her tears run hot down her cheeks, and Hermione slowly smoothed her skirts back down. Her jaw trembled and when the cry passed her lips, she turned away from the ridiculous creature kneeling before her.

Her fingers found the cuff on her arm had returned, and she touched the amber setting, again and again.

Nothing happened, no calming wave of potion suffusing her blood, and not the tale-tell itch of waking.

"No…" she whispered desperately, her tears drying up in disbelief, pulling and pushing at the setting on her cuff. "No…"

When he touched her cheek, she shrank away and began to crawl through what she found to be tall golden yellow wheat. For a moment she could not remember where she was, or why she was somehow in the middle of a field of wheat, but as her vision cleared of tears, she saw a familiar formation that caused her to freeze and sit down again.

Stonehenge.

Standing possibly three times larger than the real formation, the stones were a significant marker in the mental landscape.

Hermione stared at the formation for what seemed like minutes as the congestion of her shock and tears drained away. A peace settled over her, and she began to reassess her situation.

Besides the obvious physical deficit of her leg, she was otherwise unharmed. There were no bruises where the manacles had cut into her wrists or right ankle. Feeling along the bodice of her gown, there was no blood staining the perfection of her saffron sash, and no pain where the daggers had sank into her body. There was no lingering pain from penetration either, and that, Hermione decided, was a bigger relief than anything else.

She was not a virgin, but rape, whether mental or physical was something she knew she would have to address.

Not now…and she pushed it out of her thoughts. There was the pressing matter of being unable to use the vambrace. What Neville must be doing; Hermione wondered. What was happening outside of this mental landscape, this nightmare?

"My lady…"

Then there was the matter of Corda, the man-ferret.

Hermione sniffed and rubbing her face with her hands, shifted to turn to the creature.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you for saving me…"

The man-ferret bowed his head and moved to sit next to her again, his gloved hand reaching out to take her hands.

"I should have been quicker, but Ardoc's power has grown so strong since the last time we met…" the ferret sighed mournfully. "I am so sorry that I was unable to…"

Hermione squeezed the human hands in the gloves.

"How is it that we escaped and came to be here? This is Salisbury Plain, isn't it?"

Corda nodded.

"It is, but, I have to be truthful, my lady…our escape was more luck than anything. I-I used the last of my power to do so."

Hermione frowned. "Power?"

The man-ferret averted eyes. "The power the Prince gave me, the magic… I… I failed to protect you and we still have so far to go…"

Hermione did not fully understand, but it was clear that Corda was penitent. She discarded the guilt and stared at the silver mask between his soft pink ears.

"How far?"

Corda shook his head. "From the Plain, through the Mountain Pass and across the Lake, it will take some time, but the path we took to get to the Plain was helped by the Great Father's passage…"

"And where was I before?" Hermione asked, rubbing her left leg through her skirts absently.

"Beneath…below… The dark is Ardoc's realm, and the dark is under the kingdom for the most part."

It was not meant to be logical, Hermione assumed, but she wondered if the black sea she had seen near the beginning of her journey had had any connection to Ardoc.

"The journey will take time, and traveling through the Mountain Pass is particularly dangerous."

Hermione looked to the oversized Stonehenge again, and far beyond, just at the horizon was the black craggy shadow of mountains, much like the mountains she had seen when she was first inserted. She narrowed her eyes and slowly it became clear—the Path. It wound along the plain and through some trees and then up toward a gap in the mountains. It was like a 'silver brick road', and she sighed away the last of her internal shivers.

Struggling to rise, Hermione was helped by Corda who still held to her hands. The loss of her leg and no useable crutch in sight made her worry her bottom lip. While the pain was gone, she was already beginning to feel the strain on her good leg.

"I am…" she began, but before she could finish her thought, Corda nodded, and suddenly Hermione found herself being hoisted up in the man-ferret's arms. The sensation was odd, as if the man-ferret seemed to grow larger, or rather, her body smaller, so that she felt like a child in what felt like a man's arms. "Wait…" she gasped as Corda began moving through the wheat, slowly at first, but gradually picking up speed, his wood geta making a soft sound as he ran.

The arms that held her felt very much like the arms that had dragged her into the dark and to Ardoc. If she closed her eyes, she could not discern that a creature like a ferret carried her at all. What carried her without discomfort or jolting movement, was a giant of a man.

The man-ferret's breathing was smooth and deep as she wrapped her arms about what felt like a man's thick, muscular neck, and watched as they moved, more flew across the ground until they were on the silver road she had seen previous. Under Hermione's fingers was the softness of fur, but the shape… It was very difficult to reconcile.

Time and distance was also hard to reconcile, Hermione decided, as Corda seemed to run tirelessly through the wheat, now silver rather than gold. The mountains did not seem any nearer, and behind Corda, the large henge did not seem further away. Hermione blinked and pressed her right cheek into Corda's chest and through the vest; she heard the beating of his heart—steady and strong.

* * *

Neville did not take his eyes off Hermione for a long while as her vitals began to even out and her brain activity seemed to normalize. He sat next to her, his hand around the vambrace that did nothing to wake her. Narcissa had moved to the door to speak with Aniel and arrange more tea and biscuits.

He did not want to alarm Narcissa Malfoy by telling her that Hermione was not waking.

Neville glanced at the parchment, and as he did, words appeared. He left out a shaky breath, not realizing he had been holding it. The words that bled into the parchment were confusing at first, but Neville felt relief wash over him and he released his hold on the useless vambrace.

 _Safe for now…id is aware of presence…violent encounter…safe for now…travelling closer toward castle…_

Neville did not fully understand what was meant by _'castle'_ , but _'id is aware of presence'_ and _'violent encounter'_ did not ease his mind. He waited for Narcissa to return to her stool before imparting the message, leaving the older woman to stare at her son with a glazed expression.

"Castle?" she murmured more to herself than to Neville. "Hogwarts?"

Neville shook his head.

"Our memories and experiences shape out mental landscape. It is entirely possible."

Narcissa's gaze turned inward and Neville sighed, his own gaze falling upon the gold mask over Hermione's face.

He wondered what her mental landscape was like. Of course, she had offered to let him in when they were doing the initial experiments with HI, but he could not tell her that he was frightened what he might find in her mind. Maybe 'frightened' was not the right word? It was more along the lines of not wanting to know how she really felt about him…

The one time she had entered his mind a year before, she never told him what she saw there, and for a long time after the successful experiment, he walked on proverbial eggshells around her. The blushes that suffused his face for days, even weeks after the experiment were caused more by what he supposed Hermione might have seen.

He loved her, and surely that intense emotion was demonstrated in what she saw in his mind. Then again, Hermione never told Neville what she saw or experienced other to say that Neville's mental apparatus was well balanced. Whatever that really meant… He only hoped that Hermione had not seen his deeper desires, his dreams, or what he considered to be secrets. Hermione knew him well, well enough to know he really did not have secrets or strange tastes best kept to himself. Neville believed in honesty and transparency, especially when it came to Hermione.

The fact that he was in love with her was not something he wanted to volunteer, and, even after HI, Hermione did not inquire about.

As his eyes traced the design on the gold mask, however, he knew that he could not keep it to himself much longer. Maybe it was jealousy over Malfoy, despite being a 'vegetable,' but Neville felt some instinctually sense of unease. Hermione had become interested in Malfoy, his life, his interests, rather too quickly in Neville's opinion. And, whatever was happening during HI, Hermione would be empathetic to the man…feel something.

He _was_ jealous.

When the Malfoy elf appeared with more tea and biscuits, Neville moved his attentions to easing the ache of hunger in his gut. He moved back to his chair and sat next to Narcissa, taking tea in sustained silence.

Five and half hours had passed.

* * *

Hermione opened her eyes at the feeling that Corda's momentum had slowed. She had closed her eyes to keep herself from focusing on her frustration at their pace. Reminding herself via mantra that time, space, and physics were subjective, she found it better to close her eyes and wait. They would make it to the mountains.

Opening her eyes, she found the landscape changed. Corda slowed to a stop and grunted, moving his arms to let Hermione slide so that her one foot landed upon rocky ground.

"There is the mountain pass. It will be hard going," Corda said softly, stretching his arms over his furry head and shaking his body like a ferret would. He rubbed at his whiskers and let his silver eyes move at the mountains above them.

They were at the edge of a tree line, only craggy ground between them and a sheer mountain face of rock and snow. A single mountain composed the front, and Hermione was reminded of the Rocky Mountains in America, or at least the pictures she had seen of them. She had only ever seen the Canadian Rockies at a great distance…and knew the Himalayas intimately. She did not want to think of that, however.

Corda's gloved hand helped Hermione sit on a small granite stone, asking if they could rest a moment. Hermione nodded, watching Corda sit on the ground, adjusting his sword on his back and looking back out toward Salisbury Plain far below them. Hermione followed his line of sight and could just make out the oversized Stonehenge seemingly leagues away. But her eyes were caught by something else, far, far on the horizon.

Darkness.

It was not the falling of night, and it was not a storm, it was the absence of sky. Hermione felt apprehension begin to build in her chest, and quickly looked away.

"Is that the Blight?" she asked quietly, noticing the Corda had turned his face away from the horizon.

"Yes."

Hermione nodded, her hand going down to her maimed leg, rubbing it absently through her skirts. The feeling, it was like looking down into a deep well, half afraid of falling in.

"It is spreading around the borders of the kingdom, and it looks as though it is spreading faster…the gate and the Sea Hall must be gone."

The entrance, Hermione noted.

"We should hurry," Hermione whispered and Corda nodded, moving to stand.

They both glanced up to the mountain above them, and as if on cue, a cold wind blew down from above and Hermione shivered. Corda did not seem to notice, and Hermione wondered how she was going to able to manage the trek.

As if reading her mind: "Climb onto my back. I will need my hands."

Hermione blinked as Corda moved his sword and the belt that held it to his waist. He then reached down to help her stand. Their eyes met for a moment and Corda seemed to smile—the barring of fangs and the flash of silver in his eyes were surely meant to be reassuring. Slowly, he turned and knelt down before her and Hermione sighed.

She did the best she could to hold on, but the absence of a thigh and opposite ankle to hook her legs about what felt to be a man's waist, made hanging on difficult. Hermione was hesitant to wrap her arms about Corda's furry neck, but as one gloved hand move to secure her leg about his hips, the other pulled on her arms to lock about his shoulders. She felt his tail lift under her, and wrap across her back to hold her tighter against his back. It was an odd sensation.

"Careful now," he said softly, "the climb is steep."

Hermione nodded against his back, and again, closed her eyes as Corda began to move again. The upward climb was disorienting, and the cold that swept down, rustling her hair and dress, made her cling to the warmth of Corda as close as she could. The bottle brush end of his tail fell against her left shoulder and shielded her face from the icy wind.

After such a harrowing ordeal in the mental dungeon of Draco Malfoy's mind, the warmth of his back against her, the way his body felt between her thighs, and the wrap of his animal's tail was comforting. She knew the ache she felt in her leg and pelvis was all in her own mind, but still she could feel the pain of Ardoc's attentions. Hermione let her mind try to find a space that was the antithesis of the darkness she experienced, and soon she was recalling a vision of another forest, very different than the one in Draco Malfoy's mind. In this forest she lay in a bed of bluebells and golden leaves. The sun warmed her face with a dapple light that moved as wind caressed the trees, and the solid warmth of a man's body soothed all fears and worries from her mind. It was a vision of absolute comfort and love, and Hermione let out a soft cry knowing that she would give anything to be in the place again—her secret wish, her refuge in the man she loved…

The crunch of snow under wooden geta had Hermione opening her eyes with a snap. She was unsure how far they had gone or how long had time had passed, but the air was colder and thinner.

"The pass is near," Corda said, his voice breathy. "And there we will need to be all eyes and no noise. It is guarded by a beast…"

"A beast?" Hermione asked, her lips moving near his pink left ear.

The mountainside was snowy, littered with rocks, and Hermione's eyes moved to the crack above them, an odd cleft between rocks that reminded her of the shape of Harry's scar. Corda's shoes clacked on stone and Hermione felt a sudden shift and Corda stopped just at the narrow entrance of the gap as if being pulled by a Portkey to a specific place.

The gap was narrow at first glance over Corda's shoulder, but opened as a path wound along the backside of the mountain—a snowy path that made Hermione frown.

It looked very much like the road in Tibet. That was impossible, of course, and Hermione rubbed her eyes against Corda's wide shoulder.

"Are you alright?" Corda asked, turning his face to glance over his shoulder.

Hermione hummed. "It's very cold."

Corda said nothing and shifted Hermione's body against his back.

"There is a harpy here, and when I was being driven away from the castle, she nearly killed me before I found the safety of the forests."

A 'she', and Hermione wondered whose face the harpy would have: Narcissa? His ex-wife? There was really no mention of any other women in Malfoy's life in his journals.

"Please hang very tight to me and I will try to get us through the mountain as fast as I can…just watch my back…"

Hermione nodded and lifted her head from Corda's shoulder. Corda seemed to sigh, and shifted as he slipped his geta from his feet, decreasing his height by a couple of inches. He slipped the straps of the shoes on to his belt and touched his sword before his gloved hands brushed over Hermione's thighs and held her closer.

"Here we go," he whispered, anxiety tightening his voice.

She said nothing as she felt Corda begin to run. The gait was smoother without his geta, and though she could not see his ferret feet, she imagined the clawed pink toes and fur moving as a real ferret would. Turning her attention to the walls of the gap and the gray stone, granite of the mountain, Hermione listened.

Wind whipped through the narrow gap, but it was not as narrow as the gorge where she had been separated from Corda. The gap began to widen slowly as they moved through the cleft, and the top of the mountain was deceptively high. There were ledges high above, and Hermione felt that their passage was being monitored.

Corda's body stiffened as the pass opened and they were on a snowy path, the one Hermione had seen prior to their entrance. The high keening sound of a cry had Hermione's eyes flying about before finding a dark patch in the sky before them, growing larger.

"Damn it," Corda whispered as suddenly he slid to a stop in the snow and Hermione's heart began to pound.

The sudden heavy landing of a creature on the snowy path before them seemed to shake the whole mountain. Small avalanches started around them, nothing that would harm them, but as Hermione looked down the mountainside to the trees below, she saw the lake Corda had mentioned…and far, far beyond that, set above the lake…Hogwarts.

"You were warned, Lord Chamberlain, to never come this way again," a female voice said, the pitch high, the timbre echoing along the side of the mountain.

Hermione squeezed nearer Corda, eyes widening as she gazed upon the creature that blocked their path.

The body was that of an owl, marked like a sleek and powerful eagle owl, but the shoulders, the bared chest, the floating hair of tawny snakes, the face…it was hers. No, a version of her perhaps, one that was distorted, a caricature…

"Why have you returned?" she asked and Hermione set her teeth. It was not really her voice; it was maybe what Draco imagined her voice to be when they were children.

Corda squeezed Hermione's thighs and lowered his tail for her to slip down into the snow. The cold against her foot shocked her, and slowly she folded her leg so that she sat in the snow behind Corda. His gloved hands moved slowly to his katana and his pink, clawed feet shifted in the snow to a posture of defense.

"I need to see the Prince," Corda said tightly. "I have news and a possible cure…"

The harpy's bird feet also shifted in the snow, and the wings ruffled. It was slightly horrifying to Hermione to see a version of herself as a half-owl, almost as much as she saw her barred breasts, slightly larger than her real ones, rise and fall as the harpy began to laugh. The laugh, itself, was high and wrong.

"And you think that I would let you pass through my eyrie unmolested?" the harpy laughed. "You think that the Blight or the Prince's power has any bearing on a creature like me?"

Corda's tail flicked against Hermione's skirts, and Hermione watched as his gloved hands twitched over the sword.

"You are a subject, like me…" Corda said softly. "Your allegiance is to…"

"No one, not anymore. The Prince has no power, and you have no reason to care. Ardoc has the power here, Lord Chamberlain, and I should take you and your woman to him now…"

Corda shook his head. "Ardoc, you, me…we will all be destroyed if the Blight is allowed to spread. You are a creature of the air; surely you have seen that it has already taken the western lands…"

The harpy's preternaturally yellow eyes, again, a caricature of Hermione's, narrowed. "Ardoc has a plan…"

Corda scoffed. "Does he? Pray tell, what might that be?"

The harpy stepped nearer to Corda, a too-wide smile gracing bloodless, purple lips.

"It is her," she said, a wingtip pointing toward Hermione who shivered more from the cold permeating her skirts than the expression on her twisted doppelganger's face. "The Golden Lady…who I will take…now."

It happened too quickly for Hermione to see, but Corda and the harpy flew at each other and the sound of wings and steel echoed along the snowy mountainside. Her eyes caught the blur of feathers as it flew up into the air, and when Corda landed behind her, rolling in the snow, it was not the face of a man-ferret, it was the bloody face of a man.

Corda had Draco Malfoy's face as the figure began to rise, but paused, his pale eyes meeting Hermione's.

"Run, crawl, go…" he hissed as suddenly an arc of bright red blood flew from his chest. It caught Hermione in the face, the force of it so powerful that Hermione cried out and raised a hand to shield her eyes.

Corda fell forward into the snow, his katana sliding toward her. Hermione was gasping, her breath coming out as steam as the air seemed to grow colder.

The smell of blood, the cold, the shock, it was too familiar, too real, and Hermione whimpered as the heavy landing of the harpy shook the mountainside again. Hermione's back was to the harpy, her eyes fixed on Corda's fallen form.

She would die on the mountainside again, and Hermione felt for her vambrace, pressing in vain at the amber piece.


	9. Chapter 9

**IX.**

Six hours in, Neville felt safe to retreat to the head and relieve his bladder. His wand was Charmed to vibrate if the telemetry readings spiked or dropped in either subject. He was quick, grunting in how wonderful it felt to relieve his tea-filled bladder, and washed his hands in the basin.

He returned to the darkened room to find that Lucius Malfoy had returned, taking Neville's chair and whispering quietly to his wife. At Neville's approach, Lucius rose and moved to stand behind Narcissa and her Conjured stool.

"How much longer, doctor?" Lucius said gruffly, his hands going to Narcissa's shoulders. "It has been many hours."

Neville moved to the opposite side of the bed and glanced down to Hermione whose chest rose and fell steadily, and oddly, in time with Malfoy's.

"I could not say, Mr. Malfoy…" he trailed, glancing to the parchment to find another message from inside.

 _…mountain pass…danger…_

The message had just appeared, and Neville frowned. Almost anticipating it, Malfoy's body began to quiver and convulse, but not violently. It reminded Neville of how Hermione would sometimes convulse during a nightmare. She would sometimes drop off to sleep after a long evening of research, her head on her desk, or table, or wherever it was that they had traveled. The twitching of limbs indicated dreaming, and her soft whimpers indicated a bad dream.

She told him it was usually a recounting of what she remembered on the mountain road in Tibet. Sometimes should could turn the dream around, stop the associated PTSD dream, or change it.

'So that you swoop in and save me before the pain comes…' she had told him.

And then she'd stare at him for a while and then smile. Neville would try not to blush before his guilt at not being able to save her from the pain would set in.

"What's happening?" Lucius asked, breaking Neville from his thoughts.

Neville inhaled and lifted his chin. "He's dreaming."

Lucius frowned. "Of course he is, he's…"

"No, it is a normal dream…which means…"

"He's surfacing," Narcissa whispered, her hand moving to squeeze Lucius' on her thin shoulders.

Neville nodded. "By all indications, he has never shown such a reaction in the past."

"No. The Healers, they…" Narcissa trailed. "So…it's working?"

Neville hesitated, and drew his wand to perform a few diagnostics over both Hermione and Malfoy. Their heartrates were the same, their brain waves… He bit the inside of his cheek.

They were dreaming together, and their dream was causing stress as their heart rates and brain waves began to increase in pace.

"I-I believe so…"

But to what end, he wondered. Malfoy, as Narcissa had accurately said, was 'surfacing,' but Hermione, she was…

Neville moved to his medical bag next to the bed and knelt down to open it, curling his Cherrywood wand in his right thumb. He located his Muggle made hypodermic and the phial of drugs he needed. If the normal concoctions could not wake Hermione, perhaps the Muggle drugs would. It was a measure of last resort, but the syncopation of Hermione and Malfoy's brain wave alarmed him, a fact he absolutely could not let the Malfoy family know.

* * *

"I will take you to Ardoc now," the harpy sang, and Hermione felt a large set of talons wrap about her right shoulder as she stared after Corda's fallen form.

Hermione's mind was whirling, and as the talons sank into her flesh, she screamed and tried to turn to look at the beast.

Blood oozed down her front, staining her golden dress and suddenly the cold was the least of her concerns.

"Don't fight, I would rather not face Ardoc's wrath if you are injured furth—"

The scream that came from the harpy was louder and higher than Hermione's had ever been, and the weight of a dismembered owl's leg made Hermione fall into the snow onto her right side, more blood splashing against her face.

The harpy rolled in the snow away from Hermione even as she began to crawl toward it, Corda's katana in one hand, the other pulling at the snow to propel her forward.

"No…" she breathed. The harpy rolled and shrieked a horrible wail as blood colored the snow. Hermione shrugged the severed talons from her shoulder, wincing as fabric and flesh ripped. Then, planting the katana in the snow, she lifted her body up.

The harpy's face turned to Hermione and the shock and fear made its wings open as if to try to take flight.

"He'll kill you…I'll kill you…" the harpy screeched, wings flapping in discordance.

The swift slide of steel through bone, tendon, and feathers was oddly satisfying to Hermione as she flew along the mountain path to strike the harpy down.

More blood splashed her skirts, but Hermione did not care. The anger that filled her was irrational, and _it did not matter_.

She had two legs under her again.

The harpy began sliding off the path and down the mountain, and Hermione pursued, planting the katana into the harpy's wide back, two bare feet slamming into the tail of the harpy and using it to slide down the mountainside to the edge of a well-placed precipice.

"He can't kill me and neither will you…" Hermione ground out.

The harpy tried to thrash, to dislodge Hermione from its back, but Hermione held on, pushing the sword deeper and deeper until she felt her own heart begin to pinch in her chest. The harpy stopped moving and Hermione gasped, falling backward into the snow, pulling the katana out with her fall.

The face that rested against the edge was not hers at all. It was another woman's face, one that Hermione did not recognize. Maybe it was Astoria Malfoy's, but Hermione could not say, not able to recall the woman at all.

The symbolism was not lost on Hermione as she rested for a moment in the snow, watching the harpy's face begin to turn dark and then degrade like the crumbling of ancient papyrus books… She mulled it over as she climbed back up to the mountain path to find Corda.

It was also not lost on her that the mountain pass was the same as the one where she had nearly died. Could it be possible that her own thoughts, memories, and dreams could leak into Malfoy's? If so, it was a terrifying prospect, and yet, she was standing, dripping blood, in the very place where she had nearly died.

If only Neville were with her. If only Neville were there to hold her and help her wake. She was no longer frightened as she had been, but Hermione missed Neville and ached to have him near. As it was, she had a job to do.

Yes, this was a job, it, the blood, all of it, was not real…but it was clear that she needed help.

The sky seemed to darken as she knelt next to Corda, and she dropped the katana into the snow to use both hands to roll the body onto its back. The silver mask was cracked as it rested against his forehead, his human forehead. His hair was white, no; silver, long and wild about his face. He looked like the boy she knew all those years ago, but softer in his expression, matured properly, handsomely. His features were preternaturally fey, and Hermione felt a rush of arousal course through her body, pushing the lingering pain from her shoulder out and away.

He did not seem to be breathing. His pale, masculine arms and chest were dark with dried blood, and the gash that had produced the blood was grisly, and she could see his sternum and ribs through slashed muscle wall. Hermione felt a sudden fear.

Could a part of the mental apparatus be destroyed?

Her hands moved to press against his chest, no longer bleeding. Hermione was not sure what she could do, this was Malfoy's mind, his world, his rules.

Had she failed?

The sky darkened further until it was beginning to become hard to see clearly. Again, she noted that her body seemed to glow golden, despite the amount of blood that covered her.

"Corda?" she whispered, leaning nearer his face, hoping to feel the heat of his breath. "Corda?"

He did not stir, he did not breathe.

"Christ…" she muttered, and felt her eyes fill with tears.

She _had_ failed, and she had no way to leave, at least, not the way she came in, not at the point.

Her hands moved to his face, caressing the cold cheeks, delving into his thick, soft hair.

"Please, Malfoy, I need you to…" she wept softly. "I can't do this alone, I don't think…"

Darkness fell over the mountainside, but below, toward the lake and distant castle, it was still light. Her golden light fell over Corda's body, and Hermione whimpered as the darkness brought the echoing sound of metal against metal…and something more…

The crashing of waves.

"Please…" she whispered again, shaking Corda by the shoulders, his body stiff and cold.

When she kissed his mouth, it was like kissing the cold mountainside. She kissed him and kissed him, almost believing that her warmth could be passed through to him, her life into his… She knew she was losing it as the darkness around her began to take on a heavy sensation against her skin.

Ardoc was coming with the Blight right behind him.

When she felt her tears begin to drop off her jaw, she felt something warm under her hands, and with a gasp she fell back.

A new light, a silvery light that she had felt and seen when she was rescued from Ardoc, broke the darkness. Corda's body glowed silver and suddenly the body dissolved into a glowing orb.

"Please!" she called as suddenly the orb flew up and away from where Hermione knelt, up, up into the black sky.

 _Go_!

The command had not been spoken, but the sound of it rumbled the ground under her knees as the orb seemed to be swallowed by the dark. Hermione grasped the discarded katana and stood. The explosion of light seemed to warm the air, but it most definitely lit Hermione's way and a path down off the mountain and into the light.

* * *

Malfoy's convulsions eventually turned violent and Neville barked at Narcissa and Lucius to stand away. They had moved naturally to their son's side, and Neville hated Malfoy then—he had lived most of his life without knowing the comfort or concern of his parents. Had it not been for Lucius Malfoy and his ilk…

Alice and Frank were back now, due in part to the woman in the golden mask whose vitals spiked and normalized while Draco Malfoy's had not. Their brain wave patterns diverged, and Neville could only see that as a good thing.

Neville cast every Charm over Malfoy's prone form in quick succession and then glanced to the parchment, hoping for a message from Hermione. There was none, but Malfoy calmed, his vitals evening out. Frowning at Malfoy's silver covered face, Neville considered his options. He had no way of waking Hermione, he had no way of communicating with her, and he had no of knowing what was going on inside Malfoy's mind.

He sat down on the edge of the bed next to Hermione and brushed his knuckles against hers. He did not believe in God, but wished that if he prayed, God would listen.

 _Please let her come out of this…I love her; I love her more than life…_

* * *

Without Corda, Hermione felt ill at ease, but with her re-manifested leg, she could move with haste down the snowy mountain and into a forest of trees along the Black Lake. It looked very much like the Forbidden Forest with larger trees. It made her feel very small, and very much like the child she had been when she was a First Year. Draco Malfoy had been with them the night Harry had encountered Voldemort/Quirrell feeding on the unicorn.

There was little darkness, however, and Hermione thanked the heavens for that. The sky above, however, was gray and the light very muted. She moved between the trees in silence, carrying Corda's sword in her left hand, the tip pointed to the ground trailing behind her. It was heavy, but Hermione did not mind. Even in her dreams, she knew how to wield weapons such as a sword. She had to trust in her ability now that Corda was gone.

The loss of her guide was distressing, but somehow she knew that Corda and what he represented could not simply be destroyed. Draco Malfoy's mind was folding in on itself, and even though the spell damage was beginning to encroach upon his dismembered mental apparatus, Hermione knew that the best part of Draco Malfoy could not simply be gone.

A sudden burst of light and Hermione found she was out of the forest but blinded. Hermione paused. She was just on the shore of the lake; with a glittering silver castle looming upon the mountainside what seemed like miles across the mirrored surface. It was a tangible obstacle as she moved to touch the water's edge. The water was icy, but with her touch, the surface was not disturbed. In fact, the water was so perfectly still and clear that she could see the rocky shelf of the shore drop away many yards out. Just like the Black Lake, this lake was fathoms deep.

How could she cross? How long would it take to follow the shore to reach the castle?

Too much time…as she felt the darkness begin to wind down from the mountain behind her. She did not need to see it to know that Ardoc and what followed behind him, harrying him toward the center of Draco Malfoy's mind, was coming nearer. Hermione sighed and looked along the shoreline, seeing no boats, no docks, nothing that might help her cross the lake. And as it was not her world, not her mind, she simply could not manifest a punt to help her cross the perfection of the water.

It would have to be by foot, it seemed, and Hermione chest thumped wishing Corda was with her. No, she thought, she was no longer crippled, and this was _her_ job…

She ran and all the while considered the harpy's words.

What did Draco Malfoy's id have planned? Could that part of his mind make any plans to save itself rather than to destroy everything? Hermione feared Ardoc, and rightly so. The further away she could get from that part of Draco Malfoy, the safer she was. She had to get to the ego; she had to get to Draco.

It was at this thought that something appeared on the shore that made Hermione stop running. It was a creature, overlarge, and rather menacing in appearance.

A hippogriff.

The creature was drinking from the lake, but as if sensing Hermione nearby, raised its head and stared at her. Hermione froze, and immediately fell into a deep curtsy. She had not forgotten the way Draco Malfoy had acted when Buckbeak had injured him all those years ago. It was clear Draco Malfoy had not forgotten either.

The huge hippogriff squawked a horrible call and before Hermione let Corda's sword slip from her hand to the shore, it charged toward her. Hermione whimpered as she raised a hand to protect her face and body from a possible attack, but none came.

"Y-You are the Golden Lady," the hippogriff said softly and plainly.

Hermione opened her eyes at the sound of Narcissa Malfoy's voice coming from the hippogriff. She lowered her hand, but remained bowed, her fingers loose on the handle of the sword.

"Yes," she whispered.

The hippogriff's head bent down and Hermione met its eyes, pale and intelligent. Slowly, Hermione rose with the hippogriff and studied the creature before her. This hippogriff was twice as large as Buckbeak, its body a pale dapple-gray, its head that of a silver feathered eagle. The creature was very much like Corda in its pale features.

"Where is the Lord Chamberlain, I have been waiting for him to return for some time now. I am prepared to take him directly to the Prince…"

Hermione swallowed, her eyes moving to the katana. "The mountain pass," Hermione began.

The hippogriff's eyes followed Hermione's and its clawed front feet clenched the stones on the shoreline. "He's gone?" the creature whispered, pained.

Hermione nodded, her eyes moving to the hippogriff again, seeing that tears streamed down along its sharp beak. The creature looked away, across the lake to the castle.

"Come then, Lady, I will take you to the Prince…" it said softly, bending down.

"What is your name?" Hermione asked as she climbed onto the wide back of the beast, finding that this hippogriff far more comfortable to ride than Buckbeak.

"You may call me 'Cissa. I am loyal servant and protector to the Prince…"

Hermione squeezed her knees against 'Cissa's back as massive wings opened and the shoreline fell away. The wind generated by the wings buffeted against Hermione's body and she leaned forward to the back of the hippogriff's neck and held tight.

The lake flew past below Hermione and 'Cissa, the manifestation of Draco Malfoy's mother. Hermione found it interesting that a hippogriff was representative of his mother, and wondered where the decision came from. So far she had seen many figures important to Draco Malfoy, even a vision of herself in the harpy, but as 'Cissa flew and Hermione managed to find the rising and falling rhythm of falling not so alarming, she wondered who else occupied a place in Draco Malfoy's mind.


	10. Chapter 10

**X.**

It was night, and Neville only knew so when Narcissa returned to the darkened room and said so to Lucius, urging him to find supper. Neville was beginning to feel quite useless, and beginning to feel hungry as well.

 _…safe, closer than ever…lost guide, found another…_

The words on the parchment gave him a small sense of relief. He motioned to Narcissa to see the words for herself, and she sighed softly, moving to sit on the bed next to Draco. She was weeping softly as she took her son's hand and pressed the knuckles to her lips.

Lucius watched nonplussed, and sighed deeply, not planning to leave, it seemed.

"When he wakes…" Lucius began. "…his faculties…?"

Narcissa's head snapped toward her husband, and she frowned. Neville moved to sit in his chair and regarded Lucius Malfoy on the Conjured stool.

"It is too soon to tell, but by all the readings, I would wager that your son would wake as if from a long sleep…it is dependent on the nature of the spell damage, Mr. Malfoy, but we told you this…"

Lucius scowled. "Yes, yes, but…"

"It doesn't matter, Lucius, as long as he is awake and his body is healthy," Narcissa ground out.

Neville turned his attention to a stray thread on his pants. Knowing or understanding the dysfunction of the Malfoy family was none of his business, and had no bearing on the procedure. All the same, Narcissa's words were odd, and Neville had a thought that the Malfoy imperative to maintain blood purity had much to do with it all.

The Malfoys glared at each other for a long while, and Neville sighed.

"My parents…" he ventured and both Malfoys turned his attention to him. "They were at St. Mungo's for over twenty years, their condition as severe as your son's. Their minds were trapped and though they never gave up trying to communicate, the level of spell damage was just…"

He took a shaky breath and looked to Lucius, unable to meet Narcissa's eyes, knowing that there was a depth of guilt there—it _had_ been her mad sister…

"When we were able to repair the damage, it took a while to rehabilitate them to the point that they could maintain lucidity. Part of it had to do with their own fears. They had been separated and trapped for so long that, by their own words, they could not trust that they were free….awake."

Lucius's eyes softened a degree and he folded his hands stiffly in his lap, meeting Neville's eyes. Perhaps he had misinterpreted the Malfoy's words…

"Physically they were fine, but the mind is the seat of all power, even magical power. If you cannot center your mind and your magical ability back into your body, consciousness means nothing. It has been an ongoing process to help my mother and father to know that they live in the 'now'." The same could be true for your son. And I'm sure that when he and Dr. Granger wakes, she can give some insight to how to approach recovery."

Lucius inhaled and nodded. "Thank you, Dr. Longbottom."

When Narcissa leaned toward him and took his hands in hers, Neville forced a smile. "Could you ever forgive…?" she whispered to him.

Neville met her eyes for only a moment and then looked away. "You weren't the one to do it," he said softly, "And justice was done that night in May."

Narcissa squeezed his fingers and nodded, tears dripping off her jaw.

* * *

It was Hogwarts and it was not. Corda had called it the Silver Keep, and indeed, the walls were silvery gray. 'Cissa flew a circuit high above the lake and toward the castle. The castle was so expansive, so massive that Hermione felt a sense of apprehension by the sheer number of towers and turrets and windows. It was Hogwarts and Malfoy Manor, the Houses of Parliament and the Winchester House all meshed together—Romanesque, Gothic, Georgian and Victorian all in one.

'Cissa began to descend in gentle swoops until the scale of the castle seemed to shrink to a more imaginable and comprehensible size. Around the side of the hippogriff's neck, Hermione could see that 'Cissa planned to land in the courtyard just outside the Entrance Hall of the Hogwarts section of the castle. However, being so high over the castle, Hermione turned her attention back toward the mountain and the pass.

The darkness was moving into the forest now, the mountain and the pass gone with the dark. The darkness or maybe it was the Blight, moved like smoke, tendrils curling down, grabbing hold of land and trees as if pulling itself along the mental landscape like a horrific octopus pulling itself over coral. It was awe striking and Hermione recalled what she had read years ago about an Obscurus—a violent torrent of darkness, a dark wind... Hermione shuddered. When the darkness began to pull itself across the water, it was clear it began to move faster. Then Hermione realized that what she was seeing was Ardoc's Inquisitors, thousands of them, flying across the lake towards the Silver keep.

"Hurry…please hurry," Hermione said over the wind and the hippogriff squawked in answer.

"Hold fast!" 'Cissa called, and Hermione hugged the creature's long neck as its body bore down and folded its wings to dive.

The darkness, whether it was Ardoc or the Blight, seemed to take notice of the large hippogriff diving because a tendril of black, like a long arm of one of the Inquisitors, impossibly shot forth and Hermione found herself falling through the air, alone.

The blood that fell onto the courtyard was only the precursor to the heavy, wet thud of the hippogriff's lifeless body. Corda's sword fell next, sending an echoing clatter of steel through the courtyard. Hermione, on the other hand, was caught suddenly, the black tendril wrapping itself about her ankle.

"Mine."

It was Ardoc, and the tendril became a hand in the smoke, and as Hermione struggled with her skirts falling around her face, her mask bruising her cheek as it fell heavily against her face, she saw a figure, huge, began to materialize from the smoke. Hermione grunted as the hand seemed to cut into the ankle of her reimagined limb, and she smelled blood, her blood.

Slowly, Hermione saw she was being lowered toward the courtyard, blood running down her leg from the ankle to tickle her inner thigh.

Hermione could not look at the ruined pile of hippogriff flesh on the paving stones, and instead looked at Corda's shining katana.

"Mine, mine…" she heard Ardoc say again, his voice like thunder rumbling above her.

Her dress was ripped away and she screamed as the burn of fabric against her skin felt very real, too real. The golden fabric fluttered down to the ground, but Hermione's eyes went to something else below her—a black clad figure was gliding over the ground and snatched up the katana.

"Corda…" Hermione whispered as her body was suddenly hauled up and she came face to face with the masked Ardoc, floating in the darkness, tendrils of it wrapping about her waist, her neck, her wrists, turning into hands of disembodied Inquisitors.

"No, no," Ardoc whispered from behind his mask as his hands went to cup her face.

The mask seemed to rise away from his mouth and Hermione whimpered as purple lips parted into a feral smile, revealing pointed teeth. When he kissed her, it was gentle at first, but soon he sucked her lower lip into his mouth, and bit.

Hermione screamed into his mouth, and tried to fight only to have her arms forcefully pinned behind her back. Finally, Ardoc released her, blood running down his chin. She did not see his eyes, and somehow knew that if she did, it would be enough to undo her…

Her mouth filled with blood and she could feel the hole in her lip. She spat at his masked face as it lowered back over his mouth. Ardoc growled and suddenly was between her thighs.

"You got so close, my Lady, but not clos enou—"

A blur of silver blinded her and she was falling again, her limbs freed, and the roar of anger deafening her.

"Miss Granger…" a voice sounded in her ear as a different set of arms grasped her about the middle and she was flying over the courtyard toward the open front doors of the Entrance Hall.

Hermione blinked at the sound of her name, and choked back a cry at the voice that had said it.

Ardoc was in pursuit, but as the doors of the Entrance Hall shut, she felt the castle rumble as the blackness crashed against it like a wave. Hermione found her feet upon familiar stones, and her body swathed in a black cloak, covering her nakedness completely. The Entrance Hall was dim, but Hermione saw that it was an accurate facsimile of what she remembered from years before.

"Are you injured, Miss Granger?"

Hermione blinked and realized she had sunk down to the floor even as the cloak wrapped to warm her. The black figure, now cloak-less, moved into a beam of light and knelt down to smooth her hair from her face where it had come loose from the pins.

"I-I am…" she stuttered, her mouth full of blood again, eyes widening as they met her savior's. "Y-You're…"

Severus Snape was in his shirtsleeves, unchanged from the day he and Draco Malfoy had fled from Hogwarts after the skirmish on the Astronomy Tower. His black eyes bored into Hermione, but she did not feel a nudge in her mind…this Severus was Draco Malfoy's creation and not the man himself.

"Yes, well, I am," he said with a hint of amusement. "Can you heal yourself?"

Hermione considered his question, trying not to break out crying, trying not to gawk… She barely had the ability to keep herself from breaking down completely. Her ankle ached, and she pointed to it, and then pointed to her mouth.

"Let me see," Severus Snape said softly and Hermione straightened her leg, the cloak moving out of the way at her movement.

Whatever had had a hold of her ankle nearly severed from her leg and Hermione looked away feeling sick. Severus sighed and drew a wand.

"You can…?" she slurred through her ruined lips. Severus nodded as his lips moved to incant for the warmth of a Healing Charm.

"Yes. In this place, I can. Nearer to Draco, the more control we have. You realize that I am his construct, his memory, and an avatar?"

Hermione nodded as Severus moved to run his finger over her chin and whisper something too soft for her to hear. "I have encountered others," she said with greater clarity.

The pain in her ankle and lip began to fade, but still Hermione looked away, moving her eyes to Severus's face, to his greasy hair.

"Some are loyal, others are not. Those who are loyal to Draco have been targeted by Ardoc, and seeing 'Cissa fall…" he whispered, his thin lips drawing back in a sneer. "He will eventually breach the walls and then all will be lost. The Blight will take everything else, and Ardoc hastens it."

The touch of Severus's fingers on her ankle made her glance down to find a completely healed appendage and then she raised her finger to her repaired lip. Slowly, he rose, reaching out a hand to help Hermione to her feet.

"My dress…my…"

The golden mask was gone.

Hermione clutched at her cloak-covered chest, and a cry passed her lips as she began to move toward the doors.

"What are you doing?" Severus hissed, following after and then barring her way.

Hermione felt a panic akin to what she felt that day on the mountainside. Without the mask, she had no chance of ever leaving… She began explaining this to the mental projection of Severus Snape, and surprisingly, he seemed to understand.

"I will retrieve it, but you must go to him. You must find Draco, and you must find a way to stop the Blight!"

* * *

Lucius cradled Narcissa's head in his lap, the older woman having fallen asleep perhaps twenty minutes before. Eight hours had passed.

The parchment was filling with words now, and Neville read them over, his jaw tightening.

 _…mask gone…mask gone…mask gone…_

"What does she say?" Lucius asked, having studied Neville closely since Narcissa fell asleep. Narcissa had been sitting next to Draco and as she swayed, exhausted, Lucius also sat on the bed and bade his wife lay down next to their son.

Neville said nothing, but Lucius repeated the question with much more force.

"Nothing good."

Lucius glanced down to Narcissa's sleeping face and his fingers winding in her silver hair. "What can we do?"

Neville blinked and turned to Lucius. What _could_ the Malfoy's do? Was there anything at all? He consulted the telemetry on the parchment and closed his eyes.

"Talk to him."

Lucius scoffed. "We've tried that before…"

"No, this time he is closer to consciousness than he has ever been before…it might make a difference."

Lucius blinked, surprised, and slowly he turned to look down at his son's masked face. Neville inhaled, reading the play of emotions over the older man's face. Lucius was not one for displays of affection, but desperation had made him reconsider many things. The War had changed him more than even he knew of himself. His heir, his son, besides Narcissa, was his most precious thing…

Neville felt another pang of jealousy, no, not jealously…empathy, perhaps?

"Draco?" Lucius whispered, his free hand moving to rest on his son's shoulder. "Son?"

Narcissa stirred softly, but did not open her eyes.

"If you can hear me…please…come back…Miss Granger, she's…"

Lucius paused, raising his eyes to Neville and Neville regarded the telemetry again. There was, indeed, a slight reaction and Neville nodded for Lucius to continue.

"Miss-Doctor Granger is trying to help you out of there, please let her. We need you, son, we-we l-love you so much…please…"

Narcissa's shoulders shook and Neville knew she was weeping against her husband's thigh.


	11. Chapter 11

**XI.**

Before he slipped through the doors and out into the growing darkness in the courtyard, Hermione grasped the mental projection of Severus Snape and embraced him tightly. She tried not to cry.

"It is good to see you, Sir."

Severus Snape was very surprised and he brushed a hand across her cheek and her lips before disappearing through the door, a tender smile she could ever imagine crossing his thin, pale lips.

"Go, Miss Granger," she heard him say, and Hermione felt the tears course down her cheeks as Severus Snape flew through the door like a dark phantom.

It took many years for her to mourn Severus Snape. She had always, _always_ , respected him. He had been brilliant, brave, and most of all, the best teacher Hermione had ever had. It took many years for even Neville to accept why Severus Snape had always frightened him, and she knew that in Neville's mental landscape, impressions and influences of their former Potions Professor were everywhere. Neville looked at Severus Snape as the hinge that bent Neville's life toward adulthood—strength, confidence, and hope came from Neville's final estimation of Severus Snape.

For Draco Malfoy, Severus Snape was obviously a safeguard, a mentor. It made sense, given what Hermione knew now after the War was long over. The months of testimony to the Wizengamot had revealed much about Severus Snape's true character.

Hermione hesitated at the door, but then turned, feeling the cloak flutter about her ankles. When she moved, it billowed, much like it had when Severus Snape had worn it all those years ago. It made her chest seize as she thought of this, and she moved with haste from the Entrance Hall toward the stairs leading up.

She was unsure where to go, in truth, but somehow she decided to go up. Maybe it had been Corda's words seemingly an age before, a turret... There had to be hundreds of turrets and towers.

Seemingly moments later, in a narrow tower staircase, Hermione gasped as the castle shook as if hit by a tsunami and she fell to the stairs, her skull bouncing off a wall. Shaking her head to clear it, she hurried up to a small window in the tower and looked out, feeling blood dripping from her left temple. She was facing the mountain, but there was a shadow that seemed to cast mountainside in muted light. Taking the stone steps two at a time, she came to a door and grasped the pull ring. Stepping into a wide corridor, lined with windows, she realized she was in a part of Malfoy Manor with its much larger Georgian glazing.

"Christ," she murmured and moved to another window where she could see down toward the courtyard.

A massive wave of darkness slammed against the castle walls again, thousands, if not millions of hands tearing at the stone, and Hermione was thrown back from the windows, rolling on threadbare green rugs. The cloak twisted with her, and as another crash came, pulled her away as the rib vaulted ceiling began to fall. The cloak, displaying a type of sentience, had protected her.

The castle was falling apart.

Hermione rolled to her bare feet and gasped as the crashing became battering, and far below the Entrance Hall was breached. She began running along the long corridor cum gallery until she realized she was not really getting anywhere. It was like dreams she had sometimes, trying hard to reach something or someone only to be 'spinning her wheels.' It was a common theme in dreams, but Hermione never had so much at stake, never so much that had real world implications.

She stopped running and felt her mouth go dry as the corridor behind her began to collapse, revealing a cloudy and darkening sky above.

Then she noticed the door, very much like the one she had exited from to come into the gallery. As the windows began shattering, in sequence, she lunged toward the pull ring and found herself at the bottom of another stair tower. The climb was harder; the stairs worn and almost smooth like a ramp rather than a stair. It reminded her of medieval stair towers she had climbed in Verona before the accident, her bare feet managing to use small ribs in the flooring to climb.

Higher and higher, Hermione felt the castle begin to fall apart beneath her. She moved as quickly upward as she could in the impossibly high stair tower. Ignoring the fatigue that began to gnaw at the edges of her consciousness, Hermione finally came to a door; different from the ones she had passed through previous. It was a metal door with ornate carving, large…

"No!" she heard the rumbling around her vocalize, and Hermione screamed as the tower began to sway, sending her falling back down the stairs as the bricks and stones began to fall away.

She crouched on the stair, covering her head with her hands, but found the cloak had moved to form a type of barrier around her, stones and glass and tiles bouncing off the enchanted fabric until it began to rip. She whimpered as wind began to whip around her and the cloak was in tatters, falling around her body limply.

The tower was gone except for the stairs she sat on and the chamber beyond the door. The door itself was gone, the roof, the walls, and a gap stretched between the stairs and the exposed room. Another rumble and the floor the room fell away so that all that was left was an impossible pillar of stone holding up a massive throne, floating in the air as darkness swirled around the destroyed tower and turret.

Draco Malfoy sat on the massive silver throne that was version of the chairs at the High Table in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, dressed in simple clothes—black riding trousers, calfskin boots, and a white shirt sleeves. His hair was long and plaited so that it fell over his left shoulder. On his chest was a silver mask, much like the one she had been wearing and was now lost. His temple rested upon his fist as he leaned toward her, his elbow on the throne. It appeared he was napping, and Hermione blinked as she felt the stairs that once lead to the room began to sway.

Hermione dared not stand, frightened of the gulf of air between where she cowered on the stair and Draco. It caused a wave of nausea to crash through her. But far below, some of the castle remained, ruins now as tendrils of blackness wove through the corridors and rooms as if searching—no, Inquisitors searched, and there were sounds of fighting and destruction. This Silver Keep was Draco Malfoy's 'mind palace.'

The wind that moved around her was icy, and far beyond Ardoc, the blackness was complete, and pressing in on the castle while above the silvery sky shone down. Hermione had at least a gap of eight to ten feet between her and the slumbering Draco. She took a deep breath and crawled closer, to the very last step before there was only air. Maybe six feet…of course, time and distance meant nothing in the mental landscape.

"Draco Malfoy!" she shouted as the wind howled around her, drowning out her voice.

The wind rustled Malfoy's clothes and hair, but he did not stir. Instead, the blackness that was Ardoc froze, and as if hearing her shout, began to rise little by little like a flood of black ooze.

"DRACO MALFOY!" she shouted again, hugging the limp cloak around her, the wind threatening to rip it from her body.

Malfoy shifted slowly, but only the pale hand on his lap twitched.

"Christ, please," she murmured and began to work up the courage to stand. "MALFOY!"

The wind began to die down and this time Malfoy's neck strained and his temple slipped from his knuckles.

"Malfoy?"

He began to stir, albeit slowly.

Then she felt the remains of the tower stairs begin to shudder and Hermione gasped, turning her attention to the tendril of black smoke that began to climb up behind her, thousands upon thousands of hands reaching, pulling.

"Mine…you're mine…" she heard a whisper sound below her.

Hermione rose to her feet, fear propelling her.

"Malfoy, please!" she screamed as the smoke moved faster and faster until it had wound its way just within a few steps below her.

Hermione was gasping, and gathering up the cloak that was falling about her feet, she leapt with a scream.

* * *

Hermione was crying under her mask, and Neville ground his teeth as he knelt next to the bed to whisper in her ear. It was pointless, he knew, but he could not stand seeing her tears. Her chest rose and fell shakily, and the Malfoy's stood, Narcissa in Lucius's arms, watching intently.

"Damn it, Hermione, just hang on. Find the way out!" he hissed. "Please…please hang on…" he breathed, his breath rustling her hair.

Her cries were soft, sobbing, and her hands twitched. The sudden jerk of her right hand lifting from the bed startled Neville and the Malfoys, but when Draco Malfoy lifted his left hand, reaching out, quickly followed Hermione's and Narcissa swooned.

"What is it?" Lucius hissed and Neville jumped to his feet, going to the parchment.

 _…ego…Draco…found…_

"She's found Draco, but I don't know anything more…" he said as Lucius maneuvered his wife to the chair and sat her down, drawing his wand from his sleeve to Conjure a damp handkerchief and began to wipe Narcissa's clammy face. She came around as both Hermione and Draco Malfoy's arms lowered slowly to the bed again.

Neville checked the telemetry. Hermione was in duress, and Draco Malfoy was beginning to fail. The alarms would sound at any moment and Neville knelt next to the bed again.

"Find him, and bring him back, do you hear me, Hermione? And then bring yourself home!"

* * *

For a fleeting moment she felt as though she could fly, that she would be able to grasp the silver throne and haul herself toward Draco Malfoy. Fleeting moment was it ever.

Physics, no physics, the world of Draco Malfoy's mind could not seem to decide what to use, but this time, Hermione began to fall. Her jump was ill gotten; she knew it even before she did it. She would not ever make the height from her position below the throne, and her strength was diminished. Hermione did not count on the swirling blackness of Ardoc to catch her again, but she knew that she would rather die than to fall into the clutches of that part of Draco Malfoy again.

Maybe she would just fall and fall, forever. Or maybe, like the manifestation of Narcissa Malfoy, she would slam into the ground and be torn apart by force and gravity. All the same, it did not really matter anymore.

She had failed. She had come so close only to fail.

The cloak around her body fell away, fluttering on the wind away from her skin, leaving her utterly exposed. A flash of light blinded Hermione as she flew and she closed her eyes and waited for the impact to come.

Except it never did.

He had caught her by the right wrist, timed perfectly so that her feet and body dangled over the void. When she opened her eyes, he was staring down at her, his eyes like silver orbs in his head, unnatural. He did not lift her to safety, but studied her face, pale brow furrowed, his pale lips pressed into a tight line.

"W-what is this?" he said softly, and at the sound of it, the wind, the rumbling of Ardoc, everything went still.

Hermione winced, the pain in her shoulder very real.

"Mal-Malfoy…" she stuttered.

He lifted her slightly, his strength otherworldly, so that he could stare into her face. His eyes only swept over her naked body, and slowly his mouth softened into a grin. "I know you, don't I?" he said.

Hermione groaned softly as she felt the bones in her wrist begin to crack. "Y-yes…" she hissed.

The silver eyes blinked slowly and the pale head cocked to one side, considering.

"I could drop you," he said softly, "and get back to my rest…"

Then Draco Malfoy yawned, lowering Hermione slightly, his free hand going to his mouth and then rubbing over his face.

"No…no, please!" she cried and moved her legs to try and find purchase at the base of the throne and the ruined stone floor.

Draco stood taller, stretching, irritation marring his face. "Stop squirming or I _will_ drop you…you…Granger."

Hermione froze at the sound of her name, and met his eyes. He was smirking.

"I know _you_ …"

At those words, Hermione gasped as she was lifted up, and then fell against Draco Malfoy as he sat down on his throne with her in his lap. He held her with one arm about her shoulder, the other hand grasping her chin to force her to look at him.

"You can help me get out of here, can't you?"

She blinked, feeling his breath hot on her lips.

"It-It's why I came…" she whispered, unable to look into his strange eyes, but looked at the mask on his chest—a mask exactly like Corda's.

When he kissed her softly, Hermione closed her eyes again, her palms against his chest. It was in that kiss, so gentle, so sweet, that she realized that the light that had blinded her when she jumped had been Corda.

Hermione pulled away, eyes wide. "How…? But…" she slurred.

The silver orbs were Corda's, and in Draco Malfoy's kiss she knew that a part of him was back in place. But it wasn't done, it wasn't enough.

"The spell nearly destroyed me when I cast it, you see, splitting my mind into its three parts. I…" he trailed, his arm pulling her tighter against him even as the darkness that was the missing piece rose a like a wall of darkness before them.

Hermione tried to look at the swirling blackness, but Draco forced her to embrace him, burying her face against his shoulder.

"I don't know how to get him back in. Corda, whatever part of me that he was, came back willingly, naturally, the moment he saw you were falling. It woke me, it reminded me…" Draco said softly as the high keening noise Hermione remembered from the dungeons began to sound all around them. "With you here, an interloper or a Healer, means you might know what Ardoc is…"

Hermione pushed back hard and looked at Draco/Corda.

"You shouldn't have cast an untried…" she began, unable to finish, knowing it was pointless to scold Draco Malfoy.

He had no way of knowing what would happen, not really, and she could not entirely fault him for experimenting. The payoff was substantial for a new Charm, or Curse, but…

Hermione sighed even as the darkness crept nearer, causing every tiny hair on her body to stand on end. She had to get out, she had to wake up, and she could only see one way.

"He wants me," she said, shifting in Malfoy's lap. "He is all impulse and desire, darkness and fear. He is you, the base you that came into existence when you were born…"

He seemed to shudder under her palms. "I don't want him," he whispered even as a shape began to materialize in the smoke, floating like a specter before the throne.

"But you need him."

Draco held her tighter, if it were possible and lifted his chin. "He would hurt you, Granger…"

Hermione sniffed and looked back into the silver eyes. "It alone, yes…but if you compromise…"

Draco Malfoy frowned. "What do you…" he trailed and slowly he sneered, reminding Hermione of the boy she knew from years before. "If I want out, if I want to wake up, I have to take him back in… And if you want out, I have to give in to what he wants…"

Hermione nodded, as the keening grew louder.

"He won't go back in willingly…"Draco sighed

"Compromise," she said over the loud keening and suddenly she found herself ripped from Draco's arms as a tendril of smoke wrapped about her neck and pulled.

* * *

She had urinated, and Neville quickly Vanished the traces before the Malfoys noticed. Her heart was pounding, but faltered, and Neville Summoned the Muggle hypodermic and phial, catching both in his free hand.

Malfoy was making a strange noise, and his parents knelt at his side across the bed from Neville. He had warned them not to touch him and not to move him, no matter what they believed might be happening. Malfoy had to wake voluntarily.

Hermione, on the other hand, was dying.

He used his teeth to pull the cap from the hypodermic and stuck it into the glass phial. It was a drug like Ritalin used to stimulate waking, experimental, of course, but affective. It would force Hermione out, but Neville was not sure what the consequences would be…

Her heartbeat was irregular; her chest rising and falling in fits and starts. Brain waves were abnormal, and her incontinence meant there was damage being done somewhere. Neville pulled the plunger out on the hypodermic and went to his knees, grasping Hermione's arm, but paused before inserting the thin gauge needle.

If he lost her… There was no one else. He would be alone, rudderless. All the work they had done would mean nothing if she were gone, and he…he would never forgive himself for every allowing her to enter Malfoy's mind only to lose herself.

* * *

She couldn't breathe, but she _could_ see.

"No!" Draco Malfoy shouted at Ardoc, standing from the throne, his tone authoritative, like a father scolding a child. He stretched out a hand and as if Summoning it from thin air the silver katana appeared in his pale hand. "You will not…"

Hermione try to grasp at what held her by the neck only to claw at air. She kicked and struggled even as she saw Draco/Corda fly from the silver throne, the force of the movement toppling the remnants of the tower. The nebulous manifestation of Draco Malfoy's id began to fight with the rest of him, and Hermione's vision began to dim.

When she felt her body begin to fall _again_ , she neither knew nor cared if she would die.

Arms caught her in the dark, and she heard the shouting of Draco/Corda and Ardoc distantly. She wished with every bit of her soul it was Neville that caught her and she was just about to wake up…

She had told Draco/Corda to compromise. If Ardoc were allowed to have what he wanted without such a compromise, Draco Malfoy's mind would disappear, along with the impulse and desire to possess her. She would disappear too and Ardoc did not seem to understand—he was all instinct. Reasoning with that side of Draco Malfoy was not impossible, but it would have to be approached in terms the id would understand. Pain or pleasure, life or death.

Then there was the actual fruit of a compromise—her. Ardoc wanted her body, and possibly her soul…

There was an explosion around her, or what she thought to be an explosion, and the arms that caught her, seemed to wrap around her several impossible times—like Devil's Snare.

She thought she screamed but heard nothing, her eyes burning with blinding light, and the twining of fetters or arms, covered her eyes and face. Hermione was engulfed; it was the only word for it, engulfed in darkness and constraints. Something was carrying her, and something was laying her down as gravity reasserted itself. It reminded her of her most vague dreams of dark comfort, softness, warmth, and the press of a living body against hers…and of that place, the forest and bluebells.

"Compromise," a voice said all around her, coming from every conceivable angle about her body. "Means I can have you…and means I can wake up from this nightmare…would you do anything to wake me, Granger?"

The constraints were gone and Hermione found the light begin to rise around her like stage lighting signaling the next act. Her body was clothed in a thin sheath of gold gauze, leaving nothing to the imagination. She was in Draco Malfoy's bedroom, the white one she and Neville had walked into seemingly a lifetime ago. The room was where Draco Malfoy had slept like a version of Sleeping Beauty. The bed she lay upon was soft and warm, and the comfort of it eased her body. Sitting up, she found Draco Malfoy, the Ferret Prince, sitting at the foot of the bed, a golden mask spinning over his palm— _her_ golden mask.

"You can't go anywhere without this, at any rate…" he said softly and Hermione reached out toward it, frowning.

He looked different, she knew, a roughness to his features, his body bigger than she knew it to be in the waking world. His silver mask was perched on the crown of his head the way Corda had worn his mask. But his eyes were different, not silver orbs any longer, but gray with what seemed to be blown pupils, dark and unsettling.

"Give me…" he began, but Hermione moved, flying toward the floating mask.

Draco moved out of the way, one hand pressing against her right shoulder to hold her back.

"Granger…" he growled in warning. Then, gentler: "You…you should know that I've seen it…"

Seen what, she wanted to ask, but somehow she knew when he flicked his wrist and the mask went floating to a spot high above the bed, somewhere in the white canopy over the immense bed, out of reach.

"Your life, your ordeals, and, though I had not meant to, some of your dreams."

Hermione winced as something stung her left leg above the knee, and looking down, found that her leg was gone…again. Draco's unusual eyes moved to the stump and Hermione felt a mixture of sympathy and disgust coming from him.

"How is that possible?" she asked aloud. "HI does not work that way…or it shouldn't."

Draco sighed and shrugged, shifting on the foot of the bed.

"I won't tell…won't tell your Doctor Longbottom how you really feel about him. And I won't tell anyone how you feel about me…"

Hermione opened her mouth to retort, but Draco Malfoy rose on the bed, and slowly began to undo his vest. He was dressed, Hermione recognized, very much like Corda had been, right down to the pleated hakama that was untied and allowed to fall in a puddle of fabric in what she assumed was a floor around the bed.

"Give me what I want," he whispered, moving his plait to his other shoulder. "And I will let you go…"

His body was magnificent, and as Hermione's eyes moved over his features, found it idealized and in no way real. His skin glowed faintly silver, his body defined by musculature that made his form substantial. She would not look further than his navel, and turned her eyes away.

" _He_ could rip free again, Granger, and I don't think I could convince him to return, he's pushing against the insides now…"

 _He_ meant Ardoc.

Hermione closed her eyes, slouching on the bed, her hand going to her stump.

"I know you have…" he trailed and Hermione felt him move near, over the bed, so that his breath was on her face. He moved to kneel behind her, and slowly cool hands moved to her hair, Vanishing pins so that it fell about her shoulders heavily. "…you have wondered about me. You have dreamt about me in the past…"

"Naturally, Malfoy, I would have…you are a part of my past, my memories, though our lives diverged long ago," she whispered.

Hands pushed her hair over one shoulder, and lips traced along her neck.

"And now, with what you've seen, what you know…I've piqued your interest?"

Hermione opened her eyes as the light around the bed grew dim and pinpricks of candle flames lit the space. It was oddly melodramatic, but Hermione said nothing, and kept her hands still on her amputated leg.

"You find me abhorrent, at least, part of you," she whispered.

A hand skimmed down her spine and then around to her ribs.

"Not at the moment, Granger," he whispered. "Now let me in…let me…" he whispered, his right hand pinching her chin and turning her head so that he kissed her soundly. It was different than before, it was hot, it was…thrilling.

And it was consensual, she decided. Draco Malfoy had always, even as children, fascinated her. The boy was a mess of conflicting ideologies and bigotry, but as a teenager, after seeing him at Hogwarts that last time, she thought different of him. He was a victim as much as any of them…Harry, Ron…Neville. And when the Malfoys walked away from Voldemort, together… All those years trying to take care of his family, even going as far as risking his own life…

He would not let her leave otherwise, and she was feeling a heat growing in her belly at his kiss. Draco Malfoy was a novelty, that was all.

It isn't real anyway…she thought.

The golden sheath pulled away like glowing yellow cobwebs as Draco ripped own the back of the cloth to move to press kisses along her spine. When he laid her down on the bed, his lips kissed her collarbone, between her breasts and down to her navel. His hands stroked and plucked until it ran down to her thighs.

Hermione whimpered as his lips and breath bypassed her core and went down to her misshapen thigh. She opened her eyes and looked down at her body as he gazed back up at her before planting a kiss just above the puckered scars of her leg.

"I'm sorry this happened to you," he whispered and Hermione shut her eyes.

Draco Malfoy had changed from what she had known about him, and when he rose up to kiss her mouth again, her hands lifted to cradle his face. A part of her loved him in that moment. There was at least one part of Draco Malfoy she had no issue loving, the other was a stranger, and the last frightened her.

Slotting his thighs between hers, Hermione felt his arousal for the first time. It throbbed and scalded her, but when he stroked himself against her, Hermione felt her own arousal wetting her flesh.

"I'm sorry you had to be one to suffer to save me."

Hermione met his eyes as he pushed a curl from her face. She kissed him softly, shifting her hips against him, and he growled into her mouth.

He broke the kiss and peppered her face and neck and chest with small kisses and bites until his mouth latched on to her center, aggressively licking and sucking until Hermione wailed.

Draco Malfoy lapped at her body until she came, her fingers tearing at his hair. It had been so long since anyone had put their mouths against her most tender of flesh. It had been a very long time since a man insinuated themselves between her thighs and pressed a large head of a penis into her body. The stretching and rending was only momentarily uncomfortable, but Hermione felt the delicious fullness she remembered from her dreams. The sensation was so satisfying that by the time Draco thrust into her establishing a very hard, deep rhythm, Hermione was nearly undone.

She could only gasp and look up into his handsome face, the silver mask still in place, while his hair fell free of his braid and spill over his wide shoulders. He did look like a prince, a silver god. His teeth and jaw were clenched as his hands went to her face and kissed her deeply.

 _Thank you… thank you…_

It was a whisper, and then the kiss turned rougher as did his thrusts until Hermione turned her face away and began crying out. She felt as if her insides were molten gold being tempered with every thrust, formed into something like an idol to him in her very soul.

"Hermione…Hermione…" he whispered in her ear, but it was not Draco Malfoy's voice, it was another voice, one she longed for, one she loved. She turned her face to gaze up at the source of the voice only to see the golden mask that had been floating all the while above her, begin to descend over her face. When the metal touched her cheeks, blocking out all sight, her back arched and she sobbed her completion…

…and cried out for Neville.


	12. Chapter 12

**XII.**

Narcissa screamed as Draco Malfoy sat up suddenly in the bed, the silver mask falling from his face, the red roots that had connected him to Hermione, tearing away. Neville's eyes widened at the motion, and before he could look to Hermione, Draco had turned and was reaching for the mask on her face.

"No!" Neville shouted, his voice so loud that it must have been imbued with magic. The Malfoys froze, and all eyes fell upon him, limbs frozen in mid-movement.

Neville licked his lips, his wand sliding into his hand. He was not sure if would hex them all or not.

"Mr. Malfoy…Draco, could you please refrain from touching Dr. Granger?" he said calmly and slowly and Draco Malfoy's face and eyes softened. Draco Malfoy nodded.

Narcissa was upon her son in the next moment, wrapping her arms about her son's neck and shoulders, kissing his face. Neville ignored the motherly coos and the fussing and glanced to Lucius Malfoy who stood as if in shock behind his wife. Neville moved to Hermione, kneeling on the bed next to her, casting diagnostic Charms.

"Is she?" he heard Lucius ask softly and once again the Malfoy family turned to look down at Hermione Granger.

She was breathing, her vitals normal, but her brain waves were erratic, odd.

"She's still…?" Narcissa asked softly.

Draco Malfoy's eyes traced Hermione's body, and Neville felt a flush of anger toward the man.

"Is that Granger?" he said softly, his voice hoarse. "What's happened? Why is Longbottom here?"

Neville hissed when Draco reached toward Hermione again, and Lucius stepped forward, drawing his wand. "'Cissa, let's leave Dr. Longbottom to his work."

He paid little mind to the Malfoys or Draco Malfoy's slightly emaciated form being helped from the darkened room. Neville was more concerned that Hermione had not awakened after nearly nine hours of hypnagogic insertion. Whatever had happened, it ended in success in terms of rousing Malfoy, but Hermione…

"Please," he whispered, dropping his wand on the bed and snatching up the hypodermic he had prepared earlier. "Please, my sweet…"

His hand shook as he grasped her arm, turning it to inject the needle into her vein. With only a small amount of resistance, the needle slipped in and Neville glanced at her masked face again.

Hermione did not react and there were no words on the parchment.

He depressed the plunger slowly, and felt his vision begin to swim. When the syringe was empty, he pulled it away gentle and took up his wand to Conjure gauze to press against the tiny pinprick, folding her elbow over it. He kissed her hand and felt a single tear fall down his cheek, catching on the stubble on his face.

"Please, love…please…" he whispered, holding her hand and laying his forehead against it on the bed.

He swore he'd tell her, he swore he'd never let her put herself in danger again… Neville knew she would fight him to keep on working, and he knew he would concede, but by Merlin he would work to find a way to make their work not so fraught with danger. If he lost her…

He loved every bit of her, her body, her mind, and he would worship her if he let him. So many times he had to stop himself from touching her, so many nights he would have to excuse himself just to wank… Did she know? Had she seen it?

Neville shook his head against her hand. It did not matter. She would know, she would know when…

The fingers that curled into his hair were small. It pulled the smooth locks of his brown hair free of its ribbon, running along the crown of his head to his temple.

Neville lifted his head and looked at the woman before him. She was awake, but Neville moved, moving before her to remove the golden mask. On the bed, he straddled her waist, careful not to crush her, and pushed her mask aside to kiss her mouth and pull her against him, embracing her so fiercely that she grunted into his mouth.

"Nev…" she whispered after pulling her mouth away, pushing against his chest so he lifted his face from hers. "Nev…" she repeated, her lips swollen by his kisses.

"I'm sorry…I'm sorry," he whispered.

Her eyes were still glazed from sleep, but her frown was clear. "No, Nev…it's…" she whispered back. "It will be fine, just…just kiss me, hold me…"

Neville inhaled and blinked at her, glancing toward the door, and then back down into her face.

"Don't make me ask twice," she whispered hoarsely, her hands moving to delve into his hair and pull him near.

Their kiss was long and deep, and by the time Neville had tasted every bit of her slightly stale mouth, he was resting his weight against his pelvis. Her gown prevented her from lifting her right knee and her left thigh very high, but she bucked her hips against him causing Neville to inhale sharply through her mouth.

His hands ran along her sides, gathering up the gown as she lifted her hips. Only a pair of white cotton panties was left, but Neville's mind was elsewhere as Hermione's hands moved between their bodies to undo his belt and trousers.

When her hands grasped his buttocks, pushing his boxer briefs down, Neville groaned softly and broke the kiss.

"This…" he started in a ragged whisper. His cock sprang free of the elastic band and tapped her mound, and Neville's eyes shut as he sighed. "This is not a dream…?"

Hermione kissed him, hands moving to wrench her panties aside. "No, Nev…"

Hermione whimpered when he inserted the tip, and then wailed softly into his mouth. Neville gasped, pressing his forehead against hers, eyes slamming shut. He did not move further, so overcome with sensation and emotion that he was not sure if he should move.

Neville swallowed and opened his eyes, lifting his forehead to look down into Hermione's face. Her eyes were damp, her lips trembling. She wrapped her arms about his neck and sighed.

"You're…" he began, not exactly sure what he wanted to say. It was difficult, as he wanted to ask her half a dozen questions all at once. "You're alright?"

It was stupid, he knew, but then again…

Hermione shifted her hips slightly, causing him to groan involuntarily. His left hand moved to her hip, holding it still.

"I'm here…in the now, right?" she asked in a whisper.

In the enchanted, dripless candlelight over the bed, albeit magically dimmed for the procedure, he could see the color coming back to her face, and the life in her eyes.

Neville used his right hand to lift himself up and stare down at her face, a smile blooming on his lips. "Yeah…"

Hermione shifted and Neville grunted his smile widening.

"Prove it," she whispered breathlessly.

When he pushed in, working himself into her body to the root, they both gasped and held very still. He closed his eyes for a moment and Hermione whispered his name. The next thrust was deep and long, and Hermione cried out. Neville paused, watching her face, his brow pinched in concern.

She shook her head, the red roots beginning to fall from her temples and into her hair. "Don't stop, Nev," she said moving her hands to pull him nearer while her right leg lifted to wrap about his hips. "I-I want…I want you to…" she stammered, a blush coloring her features further.

He inhaled sharply, trying to hold back, and Hermione smirked.

"Such control," she whispered. "Let it go…I know what you want, have wanted for so long…I want it too…"

Neville gazed down at her with hooded eyes, and with one soft kiss he did what Hermione wanted.

And it was exquisite.

* * *

Hermione ate like she had been starved, and Neville contained his amusement, watching her over the rim of his teacup. They had been allowed to stay an additional two days in Malfoy Manor. Hermione needed rest, and there were post-procedure tests to conduct. The Malfoys, Lucius and Narcissa, were so happy that their son was awake, Neville believed they would never deny Hermione anything.

They remained in their rooms after the procedure, Neville tending to Hermione. After he was able to move her to their rooms, he made sure she was physically healthy, unimpaired, and given the proper medical attention for her stress. Of course, it would remain off the record what had occurred after Hermione's waking.

Neville had to force himself away to due diligence to their patient. It was difficult leaving Hermione even for a moment. He was afraid that he had the one who had been dreaming, and did not trust that Hermione was awake.

Draco Malfoy was still physically weak almost six hours after waking from a vegetative state. Neville found that the elder Malfoys had done quite well to make their heir comfortable in his old rooms. It was the rooms that Hermione had investigated and not the near sterile bed chamber Neville had first seen Draco Malfoy.

Upon entering the smaller, stark room, it took several moments for Draco to know who Neville was. Draco Malfoy laid in his narrow bed, his mother sitting at the foot of the bed, watching over him, perhaps fearing he would fall back into his cursed sleep. Neville could sympathize. When Neville asked Narcissa to give them some privacy, Draco Malfoy smirked, and it was clear by his mannerisms that he recalled who Neville was.

Neville Conjured a stool to sit on next to the bed and studied Malfoy's face. There was still very little color to the relatively pale man, but it was more than Neville had noted before. Having not slipped his wand back into the holster on his belt, Neville did a few discrete diagnostic Charms and found Draco Malfoy in excellent health besides being a bit vitamin deficient.

"You've finally grown into yourself, Longbottom," Draco Malfoy said, and Neville was surprised it was 'sneer-less'. Malfoy had long been a bully, and like Hermione, Neville had not had any dealings with the man since the War. "You cut quite a figure now…how long has it been since we've…" Malfoy said, trailing, his eyes rowing distant.

"Many years, Mr. Malfoy. Now, I'd like to ask you a few questions."

Malfoy blinked and frowned. "'Mr. Malfoy?' Come now, Longbottom…"

Neville pressed on. "On a scale of zero to ten, could you rate your pain?"

Malfoy smirked. "Zero. I'm just…just very tired."

"Can you elaborate?"

Again, Malfoy's eyes grew unfocussed and distant. Neville made a mental note of this, and waited.

Then, with the trademark drawl: "Oh, I don't know, like I've been asleep for months kind of tired, Longbottom. What the hell do you think?"

Neville could not help but smirk. "What is the last thing you recall before coming to consciousness and seeing me?"

Malfoy sighed and crossed his slightly emaciated arms before his pyjama-clad chest. Neville noted that at some point he had been helped into a pair of dark blue silk pyjamas. It made him seem paler, of course, made his long hair seem silver, older, prematurely.

"I remember being in my lab. I remember being under pressure to finish that god damn spell, and being annoyed that my fucking family might lose their home…"

Draco Malfoy surely was feeling better; he was still the same facetious asshole Neville Longbottom recalled…maybe a bit more tempered with time and bad circumstance, but the same.

"Do you recall anything, a vision, a dream, anything that may help you recall the time between your curse damage and now?"

Malfoy sighed, his back slouching, and to Neville, it appeared Malfoy was instinctually curling in on himself—odd.

"I dreamed, but I…" he mumbled, those gray eyes distant, fixed at point beyond the counterpane of the bed over his toes. "…why was it Granger? My mother told me who it was that had come to help heal me, but why did it _have_ to be Granger?"

Neville blinked and grasped his trousers at the knees, curling his wand in his thumb. "She has had the most experience with the procedure, and…"

"How could you let her go…?" Malfoy asked in a whisper, and then, as if remembering himself, blinked and looked at Neville. "I dreamed that I loved her, and I dreamed that I hurt her, and then I dreamed that she loved us both…"

A swell of anger, then cooling with a twist of fear, Neville managed to keep his face still, though he knew his eyes were probably shooting daggers.

"Is she…?"

"Dr. Granger is resting well. She will be fine…" Neville said tightly.

"It is getting vague the more I try to remember. I…"

Neville stood after a sigh, dispelling the Conjured stool. "Physically, you are in good health, Mr. Malfoy, but I would like to monitor you for a while longer. Ideally, we would like to get you up and moving. I will ask for your Healers to attend to you for now, work on a regime of vitamins, diet, etc."

Malfoy nodded, his body relaxing. Neville returned the nod. "I will look in on your this evening, Mr. Malfoy." Neville slipped his wand back into his holster and turned to go to the door.

"Can I see…?" Malfoy started and Neville paused before touching the doorknob. He felt a sudden throb of apprehension behind his eyes, and swallowed thickly before turning back to Malfoy.

"Rest now, Mr. Malfoy. You have had a major trauma…" and the Neville was away.

* * *

When Neville returned to his rooms on the other side of Malfoy Manor it was to find Hermione dressed, her hair pulled back in a messy bun, bending over a roll of parchment and writing frenetically at a writing desk under one of the large windows in the sitting room. At his approach, she smirked, and motioned for Neville to come near with her left hand while her right hand scratched at the parchment with a quill.

When he came near, Hermione grasped his hand and squeezed. The gesture startled Neville, but soon he smiled and pressed his thigh into her shoulder. Looking over her head, he read her scrawl and realized she was writing up notes.

"I'm losing it…" she whispered.

Neville frowned. "Hm?"

Hermione paused to read over her last line and continued writing.

"I'm losing what I saw…not my mind," she mumbled, lifting Neville's hand to her cheek.

It was a strange thing, Neville thought, but very much Hermione—multitasking.

He watched her write for a while longer, his hand moving from her cheek to run along her neck. He read her words, finding her analysis very interesting at first, but as he read on, alarming.

"Hermione…" he whispered as he read about the manifestation of Draco Malfoy's id, Ardoc, and what he had done to her. His hand began to tremble on her shoulder and Hermione, who was writing about a foot below where Neville was reading, stopped and looked up at him.

Neville was sure his face was flushed, his mouth set in a hard line, but as Hermione rose from her seat at the desk, her prosthetic squeaked. Her arms went about his neck and she looked up into his face, her eyes soft. When she spoke, it was in a whisper, forcing Neville to look down into her face.

"I am fine. I won't lie, it frightened me, it hurt me, but, Nev, it was _not real_ …"

His arms wrapped about her waist, pulling her near. He wanted to carry her away from Malfoy Manor, and take her…where? Neville sighed; wondering how much had changed—between them, in his life… All he knew was that she was not being completely truthful. As much as he trembled with barely contained anger, she was trembling from what only could be the first signs of a new post-traumatic stress.

"…it was real enough, " he whispered, pressing his forehead against hers, lifting her lightly so that only her toes of her prosthetic touched the rug covered floor. "And once you get your notes done, I think you should maybe consider a Memory Charm."

Hermione closed her eyes and Neville lifted his head, lowering Hermione back to the floor. She sighed, and he knew that she was disappointed at his suggestion.

"I'll…I'll consider it," she whispered and pulled away to return to the desk. "I'm almost done, but I want you to read it over and help me finish the analysis."

Neville rubbed a hand over his face and nodded at Hermione's back. He had his own notes to finish, but all he wanted to do was snatch Hermione up and run. He moved to the fireplace in the sitting room and stood near it, warming a sudden chill that ran through him. He listened to the scratch of her quill and licked his lips, trying to set his mind on a different course—professionalism was a wonderful distraction.

Hours later, however, when Hermione presented him with a thick roll of parchment where he sat on the sofa, leaning over a low coffee table finishing his own notes, Neville blinked. He took it from Hermione's hand and watched her sit down in a wingback chair nearby, looking into the fire.

"We need a vacation," she said with a soft laugh. Neville smirked and let the roll fall heavy in his hands. He did not really want to read it…

"How was Malfoy, you didn't say."

Neville sat back into the sofa, away from his notes, letting the parchment rest in his lap. He hummed, rubbing sore eyes. "Alive, awake, sorely lacking in vitamin D, but very much himself."

Hermione nodded, looking into the fire. The light in the room was beginning to fail. Neville was feeling exhaustion tugging at the edges of his brain, and looking at Hermione, he could see weariness in her movements and in her face.

"Do you want to see him?" Neville asked, slightly surprised at his own question. Hermione turned in her chair and met his eyes. Her gaze was cold.

"Never again."

* * *

They slept that night after a light supper. Neville set wards on the doors to the rooms, and added more around the bed that they shared. He thought it might be paranoia, but there was something about Draco Malfoy asking to see her, and Hermione never wanting to see Draco Malfoy again that made it so Neville set his own brand of warding. He held Hermione until she fell asleep against his chest, and when her breathing evened out, Neville closed his own eyes to the dark.

He was not sure if he made it to REM sleep when Hermione shifted against him. Neville surfaced and realized she was awake and whispering his name.

"I had a bad dream," she whispered, her words almost childlike, but as she twisted against him, pressing her back against his front, Neville grunted at the sensation of the swell of her backside against his pelvis. "We were on that mountain road again."

Neville swallowed, and letting his eyes adjust, realized it was early morning, the gray light of the Wiltshire countryside diffusing through the windows of the bedroom and through the fringe on the velvet curtains of the poster bed. Everything was in that strange monochrome of low light, and Neville could only see the shell of Hermione's left ear and part of her cheek.

"I was dreaming that you were not there to pull me out of that car, and it slid down the mountain and caught fire…and I burned…"

He wrapped arm about her then, pulling her tighter against him. "It was only a dream…"

Hermione hummed. "Yes."

Neville pressed a kiss into the back of her neck, through her hair, and closed his eyes again. When Hermione spoke again, it startled him awake.

"I was thinking of you before _he_ let me go…"

He did not understand, but she continued, twisting her hips against his front.

"It is my brain trying to cope with the traumas I experienced in his mind, but I remember the last bit, before he let me have my mask back…so I could leave his mind… I heard you say my name. I heard you, Neville, and as I was coming back, I recalled everything I saw in you…and wished, more than anything to be in that place, in you, again."

Neville shifted to look down at her, bending his arm to rest his head on his fist.

"You never…" he began as Hermione turned her face to look up at him.

"The Curse Malfoy created blasted apart his very soul, and what I saw and did there was only to serve to restore Malfoy to himself. What I saw in you, Neville, was something so…so lovely that I dared not speak of it else I would ache to return."

Neville's eyes grew distant, and for a moment, a fleeting moment, he recalled a fragment of a dream where Hermione was swathed in gold leaves and bluebells, lying with him in the Wyre Forest that composed the majority of his dreams. He had spent many hours in those trees as a small child, escaping his Gran's house when he seemed to fail her and the memory of his parents' heroism again. His mental Wyre Forest was vast, colorful with bluebells. In that fleeting recollection, Hermione Granger was wreathed with bluebells and golden leaves, a queen of light. With her he felt such desire that even in recollecting it; it made his body surge with a thrill of need.

"I did not want to leave that place, and though I spent a lifetime there with you, I knew that I had to come back to the waking world. It was like heaven for me, I was forever warm, forever whole, forever beautiful, forever satisfied…and I…" she trailed, her eyes beginning to water. "I had to have you _here_ …in this place, I had to have my own dreams."

Neville brushed away a tear on her cheek.

"There was darkness in you, Nev, one that I could not examine, but I know now what it is…after Malfoy…"

Neville caressed her face. "What is it?"

Hermione sniffed, and rubbed her eyes. "Your desire, _your_ id. And in Malfoy it was frightening to see, but in you, my sweet, lovely man, it is even more terrifying because I never actually saw it. I felt it. I feel it now, and here, in the waking world, I think it is what made me come back from that twisted kingdom in Malfoy's soul."

"I don't frighten you?" he asked softly.

She smirked, "No, but if you did, I wouldn't want you… I have, _we_ have, lived with fear so long, and I don't want to live with it any more. I just want you to hold me, to be with me, Neville, always…"

He would not deny her that, and he kissed her to seal that wish. He kissed her mouth, her cheeks, and working her out of her plain shift, kissed every bit of her that he could reach. He worshipped her body the way the darker part of him had always wanted to. Even as he lapped and laved her core, forcing her voice to sing out in the most exquisite cry, he felt the perfect movement of his own mental apparatus—a machine that let his darker wishes coexist with his sense of selfless love and sense of self-satisfaction. He could, in retrospect, only pity someone like Draco Malfoy whose soul had been so injured.

Their bodies moved against each other naturally, and the only sounds were their soft voices lauding their joining. For Neville, it was a joyous fulfillment of desire. And later, much later, Hermione would say it was an act of healing.

Hermione straddled his hips and pressed her palms into the planes of his chest even as the sun rose, sending golden beams of light onto the bed. She was his Golden Lady then, and forever.

* * *

Draco Malfoy was eating breakfast in a warm conservatory in the Manor when Neville found him. Neville had sent Hermione back to the office in London with their bags and equipment, and Neville wished to be polite and bid Draco Malfoy a final goodbye.

In the sunlight through the steamed panes of conservatory glass, Draco Malfoy looked much healthier, livelier. He was dressed in a very plain set of trousers and white shirtsleeves, a cardigan hanging on the back of his chair. His pale features were still rather off-putting, but there was some color in his lips and cheeks as he asked Neville if he wanted some tea.

Never did Neville think that Draco Malfoy would offer tea.

"No, I really should be getting back," Neville said standing before the small iron garden table and chairs, his hands folded behind his too-warm jumper. Neville felt Malfoy's gaze study his form, eyeing his boots, trousers, tasteful cream-colored cable jumper rolled to his elbows, his hair, loose from its ribbon, and his just shaven face. There was a strange yet fast dissolving expression on Draco Malfoy's face, and it did not take a master of Legilimency to read that Malfoy was sizing Neville up.

"I will be reviewing your Healer's notes, Mr. Malfoy, and we will be in touch if we feel there should be anything to address, but…" Neville trailed, eyes narrowing as Malfoy's mouth thinned. "…by all indications, you are in good health, mind and body."

Draco Malfoy's eyes flashed away and Neville felt his expression darken.

"Granger…" Malfoy began, setting his tea cup on its matching saucer. "She doesn't want to see me?"

Neville straightened and after a moment: "No."

Malfoy nodded. "It is almost gone now…what I dreamt. But…but could you tell her that I am…" he trailed, his face softening for a moment. He cleared his throat and his face hardened again, his gray eyes moving to meet Neville's. "I am grateful."

Neville inhaled deeply and nodded, his fingers aching from squeezing his hands behind his back so roughly. He did it to keep himself steady, to keep himself still, and he did it to not give in to the desire to curse Malfoy back into a coma. No, no, he told himself, it was irrational to feel such a territorial desire to protect Hermione. Time and circumstance had proven that she could take care of herself.

"And Longbottom?" Malfoy asked even as Neville began to turn and leave the overwhelming heat of the conservatory. Neville only turned enough to regard the pale man out of the corner of his left eye, watching a haughty sneer cross the man's face. "If you do not handle her properly, I will take her from you…"

Neville turned and left the conservatory, giving Malfoy his last word.

As if she were a thing to be 'handled,' Neville scoffed as he moved past the foyer and to the front door, collecting his coat from a silent Nyx along the way. When he felt the shift in the air, he Apparated away from the Wiltshire Manor, and moved straight through the open door to the London offices. He moved toward Hermione who was sitting at her desk, looking out the enchanted window at the rain falling on the streets of the city.

Her eyes were distant, but at his approach, she turned to him and smiled.

"Are you ready?" she asked as Neville shrugged out of his coat, tossing it on his messy desk, and drew his Cherrywood wand. He knelt before her as she turned in her wooden office chair, her hands going to grasp his face tenderly.

"Yes," he whispered, and Hermione leaned down to kiss him. "Are you?" he asked as she sat back, her hands moving to his shoulders.

Hermione nodded, and grasped his jumper as he lifted his wand and whispered the incantation.

The Golden Lady and the Ferret Prince were wiped away. He considered wiping away that day on the mountainside, but knew it was something she could never reconcile. Neville could not give her back her leg, but he could give her solace by removing the dimming memory of a bad dream.


End file.
